The judges for the 1998-99 Irish Times Literature Prizes are announced today. The International Fiction Prize judges are Bill Buford, fiction editor of the New Yorker, Douglas Kennedy, novelist, travel writer and critic, and Irish novelist and short-story writer Mary Morrissy. The Irish Literature Prizes - to be awarded for fiction, poetry and non-fiction written in English - will be judged by former National Library director Pat Donlon, author and critic Julia Neuberger and novelist and UCD Professor of Philosophy, Dr Richard Kearney.
For the first time a separate prize is to be awarded for a work in the Irish language. This award will have its own panel of judges - Alan Titley, Diarmuid O Muirithe, and Aine Ni Ghlinn - and will go to the single most outstanding title to be chosen from among works of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The winner of the International Fiction Prize will receive £7,500, with £5,000 going to each of the four winning authors in the Irish Literature categories. The eligibility period for all the prizes is for books published between July 31st, 1997 and August 1st, 1999. Shortlisted books and authors will be announced in early September 1999 and the winners a month later.
The Irish Times Literature Prizes were established 10 years ago this year and past winners include Don DeLillo, A. S. Byatt, John McGahern, Colm Toibin, Prof J. J. Lee, Patrick McCabe, Derek Mahon, Ciaran Carson, E. Annie Proulx, Brian Keenan, J. M. Coetzee, Paddy Devlin, Robert Greacen, Paul Muldoon, Declan Kiberd and Seamus Deane.
Douglas Kennedy (left) was born in New York and educated at the Collegiate School, Bowdoin College, and Trinity College, Dublin. He lived in Dublin for 11 years, during which he worked as administrator of the Peacock Theatre. Several of his radio plays - Shakespeare On Five Dollars A Day, Floating Down The Nile On The Oxford English Dictionary and The Don Giovanni Blues - were broadcast by the BBC. In 1986, his stage play Send Lawyers, Guns And Money was produced by the Abbey Theatre. His novel The Big Picture was a best-seller in the US and has been translated into 14 languages. His previous novel, The Dead Heart, has been filmed as Welcome To Woop Woop, and a new novel, The Job, is due for publication in August. He is also the author of three highly acclaimed travel books, Beyond The Pyramids, In God's Country and Chasing Mammon.
Bill Buford (right) was born in Baton Rouge, Louis iana, and grew up in California. Since April 1995 he has been fiction and literary editor of The New Yorker. For 15 years he was editor of Granta magazine. He has also been publisher of Granta Books, a joint venture with Penguin Books. He edited three anthologies: The Best Of Granta Travel, The Best Of Granta Reportage, and the forthcoming Granta Book Of The Family. His non-fiction book, Among The Thugs, a highly-acclaimed non-fiction account of crowd violence and British soccer hooliganism, has been translated into 10 languages.
Mary Morrissy (left) was born in Dublin. Her first collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye, was published in 1993 and her first novel, Mother Of Pearl, received critical acclaim when it was published in 1996. Her stories have been widely anthologised in Ireland, Britain and the US. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and a Hennessy Award for short stories. Mother Of Pearl was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and is to be filmed. She has reviewed fiction for the Independent On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times and The Irish Times. She is currently completing her second novel.
Pat Donlon (right) is a former director of the National Library of Ireland. Elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1992, she served as vice-president in 1995 and 1997. She lectured on children's literature at University College, Dublin from 1979-1989 and in 1997 received the Children's Books Ireland Award for distinguished services to Irish children's literature. In 1997 she was appointed examinations commissioner by the Minister for Education and became a member of the governing authority at the University of Limerick. She is currently senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University, Belfast, and has been nominated Sandars reader in bibliography at the University of Cambridge for 1998-1999.
Richard Kearney (left) was born in Cork and is a professor of philosophy and chair of the film school at University College, Dublin. He has written and edited 20 books on philosophy and literature, including most recently States Of Mind and Poetics Of Modernity. He has written two novels, Sam's Fall and Walking At Sea Level, and a volume of poetry, Angel Of Patrick's Hill. He has been a member of the Higher Education Authority and of the Irish Arts Council, where he served on both the literature and film committees. He has presented Visions Of Europe, L'autre Irlande and The Book Programme for Irish and European television.
Julia Neuberger (right) was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Leo Baeck College, London. She became a rabbi in 1977 and served the South London Liberal Synagogue for 12 years. She was a fellow at Harvard Medical School in 1991-1992, is a member of the British General Medical Council, and has been chancellor of the University of Ulster since 1994. She is the author of several books, the most recent of which is On Being Jewish. She regularly reviews fiction for British newspapers and journals. She divides her time between homes in London and west Cork.
Diarmaid O Muirithe (left) is a native of New Ross, Co Wexford. He has recently retired from the Department of Irish Language and Literature in UCD, where he was statutory lecturer. He has been a Fulbright professor of English and has lectured in American and Canadian universities. He is the author of 10 books on a range of topics, including acclaimed works on Anglo-Irish lexicography. He has had 12 plays broadcast by RTE Radio in both Irish and English. He won a Jacobs Award for radio for a series on traveller's accounts of Ireland. He writes The Irish Times Saturday column, The Words We Use, which has twice been published in book form.
Aine Ni Ghlinn (right) is a poet and journalist. She produces and presents two weekly arts programmes for Raidio na Gaeltachta, Labhragan (a books programme) and Ar An Ardan (a general arts programme). She has published three collections of poetry, An Cheim Bhriste, Gairdin Pharthais, which won the Bord na Gaeilge award at Listowel Writers' Week 1997, and Deora Nar Caoineadh/Un- shed Tears. She has also published two non-fiction works for teenagers: Mna Agus An Ngnath and Daoine Agus Deithe. She has received a number of Oireachtas awards and Arts Council bursaries in 1992 and 1996. She reviews books in the Irish language for a number of publications including The Irish Times.
Alan Titley (left) is head of the Irish Department at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. He is a novelist, story writer, dramatist and literary scholar. He is the author of nine books including a novel, An Fear Dana, a collection of short stories, Eiriceachtai
Agus Scealta Eile, which won the Irish-American Butler Prize in 1987, and a collection of fables, Fabhalscealta, which have also been issued on cassette. Tagann Godot, a kind of sequel to Waiting For Godot, was produced by the Abbey. His play Ludo is based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's time in Ireland and Norway. An tUrsceal Gaeilge is a comprehensive study of the novel in Irish, and Chur Doirne is a selection of his cultural and literary essays. His literary work has been translated into several languages, including Italian and Serbo-Croat.
