In 2019 the literary critic and writer Lesley McDowell resigned from her role as a judge on the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award panel because, she argued, ‘no-one on the panel had read all the books in their entirety’ and ‘Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport – a book written by a woman about a woman – was being overlooked in favour of a book written by a man about a woman’. A newspaper article discussing this controversy considered it in relation to the wider gender disparities of the Society's Literary Awards and, indeed, in literary prizes in general, citing the work of Nicola Griffith who showed that ‘books most likely to win awards [are] those written by men about men’. However, one of the most striking aspects of the article was how the Society's programme director, Sarah Mason, had framed the Society's response to the incident:

Indeed, the Society's roster of literary award winners is somewhat of a who's who of contemporary Scottish literature. Many of the authors listed are those who, as discussed in the previous chapter, have seemingly transcended their ‘Scottishness’ and become nationally, if not internationally, renowned writers, going on to be shortlisted for, and winning, major prizes and have their work adapted for film, television and theatre.