Two Northern Ireland writers, Seamus Deane and Robert McLiam Wilson, have been shortlisted for this year's Irish Times International Fiction Prize. These two writers have also been placed, by a different judging panel, on the shortlist for a second Irish Times literary award, the Irish Literature Prize for Fiction, which is confined to Irish authors.

The judges for each prize placed Deane's first novel Reading In The Dark and McLiam Wilson's Eureka Street on their respective shortlists. It is the first time in the eight-year history of the prizes that two Irish writers have reached the international fiction list. It is also the first time that no American author is on the list.

Joining Deane and Wilson on the 1997 International Fiction Prize shortlist are British author Penelope Fitzgerald for her novel The Blue Flower and Indian writer Rohinton Mistry for A Fine Balance.

As well as fiction the Irish Literature Prizes embrace poetry and non-fiction and three works are shortlisted in each section. Deane and McLiam Wilson are in competition with Cork-born author William Trevor whose latest collection of short stories, After Rain, was also selected by the judges.

Two of the writers included on the poetry shortlist are also from the North. John Montague has been shortlisted for his Collected Poems and Paul Muldoon for New Selected Poems. Eavan Boland's Collected Poems completes the list in the poetry category.

A work in the Irish language, Aisling Ghear, by Professor Breandan O Buachalla is one of the three books on the non-fiction list. Declan Kiberd's Inventing Ireland and The Summer Soldiers by A.T.Q. Stewart are the other contenders.

A total prize fund of £22,500 provides the three winners of the Irish Literatures Prizes with £5,000 each, with £7,500 going to the author of the winning work in the International Fiction Prize category.

The judges for the International Fiction Prize are: Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and former literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, Jack Miles, who chairs the panel; writer, critic and Chancellor of the University of Ulster, Rabbi Julia Neuberger; and novelist, short-story writer and scriptwriter Carlo Gebler.

The Irish Literature Prizes judges are: English novelist and critic A.S. Byatt; poet Michael Davitt; novelist and playwright Emma Donoghue; UCD lecturer Jerusha McCormack and historian and author Professor John A. Murphy.

The international prize is for a work of fiction written in English and published in Ireland, the United Kingdom or the US between August 1st, 1995, and July 31st, 1997.

Work eligible for the Irish Literature Prizes can be written by an Irish writer in either English or Irish and published in Ireland, the United Kingdom or the US between August 1st, 1995, and July 31st, 1997. Works of history, biography, autobiography, politics, criticism, travel, current affairs and belles-lettres are among the categories eligible for the non-fiction prize.

The winning books will be announced at the beginning of October and former President, Dr Patrick Hillery, will present the authors with their prizes at a ceremony in the RDS, Dublin, on November 20th.

The winner of the last International Fiction Prize in 1995 was South African writer J.M. Coetzee for his novel The Master Of Petersburgh.

Other previous winners in this category were: Don DeLillo for Libra, in 1989; A.S. Byatt for Possession (1990); Louis Begley for Wartime Lies (1991); Norman Rush for Mating (1992); Annie E. Proulx for The Shipping News (1993).

Shortlisted authors have included John Irving, E.L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, John McGahern, William Trevor, Alice Munro, John Updike, Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, David Malouf, and Jane Smiley, Cormac McCarthy, Vikram Seth and Penelope Fitzgerald.

Previous winners of Irish Literature Prizes are: Frank Ronan for his debut novel The Men Who Loved Evelyn Cotton; John McGahern for Amongst Women; Ciaran Carson for Belfast Confetti; Professor J.J. Lee for Ireland 1912-1985; Colm Toibin for his first novel The South; Patrick McCabe for The Butcher Boy; Derek Mahon for his Selected Poems; Brian Keenan for An Evil Cradling; John McKenna for The Fallen And Other Stories; and Kathleen Ferguson for The Maid's Tale, Robert Greacen for Collected Poems, and Paddy Devlin for Straight Left in 1995.