International Fiction Prize

Carlo Gebler is the author of many acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction. He has also worked as a writer and director on a number of TV dramas and documentaries and has written books for children. A member of Aosdana, he has also written reviews and articles for many publications.

Jack Miles (Chairperson) is a native of Chicago and an Irish citizen. He spent 10 years as a Jesuit seminarian, and won the 1996 Pulitzer prize for biography, with God A Biography. He is director of the Humanities Centre at Claremont Graduate School, California and is a former literary editor and member of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times.

Rabbi Julia Neuberger was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Leo Baeck College, London. She became a rabbi in 1977 and served at the South London Liberal Synagogue for 12 years. She has been Chancellor of the University of Ulster since 1994. She is author of several books, the most recent of which, On Being Jewish was published in 1995.

Irish Literature Prizes

A.S. BYATT (Chairperson) won the Booker Prize and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize in 1990 for her novel Possession. Her most recent book, Babel Tower, is the third in a planned quartet of novels and follows The Virgin In The Garden; Still Insects, The Shadow of the Sun, The Matisse Stories and The Dijnn in the Nightingale's Eye. She was awarded a CBE in 1990.

Michael Davitt was born in Cork in 1950. He is a poet, editor and television director/producer. His books of poetry include: Rogha Danta/Selected Poems - a bilingual collection, and An Tost a Scagadh. He received the Butler Prize for Literature from the Irish American Cultural Institute in 1994. E. His recent television documentary on the Connemara seannos singer, Joe Heaney, Sing the Dark Away, received critical acclaim.

Emma Donoghue was born and grew up in Dublin and now lives in Cambridge, where she is working on a PhD. She is the author of two novels, Stir-fry and Hood, and two plays which have been staged to acclaim in Dublin and Cambridge. Her latest book, Kissing the Witch, is a collection of original fairy tales. She E television books programme and is currently editing a section of the new volume of The Field Day Anthology Of Irish Writing.

Jerusha McCormack was born in America but has lived in Ireland for the past 25 years. She is a lecturer in the English Department at University College Dublin. She has published a critical biography of John ("Dorian") Gray, a protege of Oscar Wilde, and is editing a collection of commissioned essays by Irish writers on Wilde and Ireland.

Professor John A. Murphy was born in Macroom, Co Cork, and is Emeritus Professor of Irish History at University College Cork. He was Professor of Irish History in UCC from 1971-1990 and has been a visiting professor at Loyola University of Chicago; James Madison University, Virginia; Boston College and Colby College, Maine. He was an independent member of the Seanad from 1977-1983 and 1987-1993.