The judges for the 2000-2001 Irish Times Literature Prizes are announced today. The International Fiction Prize judges will be author and essayist Geoff Dyer, novelist Julia O' Faolain, and psychiatrist and broadcaster Dr Anthony Clare. The Irish Literature Prizes - comprising three individual awards for fiction, non-fiction and poetry - will be judged by historian Dr Dermot Keogh, novelist and poet Anne Haverty, and radio and television broadcaster Mike Murphy.
The Irish Language Prize will be adjudicated by author, critic and lecturer Alan Titley, poet and broadcaster Aine Ni Ghlinn, and writer and columnist Diarmaid O Muirithe. The shortlist in this category can include fiction, non-fiction and poetry, with a single prize going to the book considered the most outstanding from among the shortlisted titles.
The International Fiction Prize is worth £7,500, and the winners of the four Irish Literature Prizes will each receive £5,000. In all categories, books must be published between July 31st, 1999, and August 1st, 2001, to be eligible. The shortlists will be announced in September 2001 and the winners announced the following month. Further details are available from The Administrator, The Irish Times Literature Prizes, The Irish Times, D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, (e-mail: booksprizes@irishtimes.ie).
Anthony Clare was born in Dublin. He qualified as a doctor in 1966 at University College Dublin and during his time there was a winner, with Patrick Cosgrave, of the Observer Mace for Inter-University Debating in 1964. He trained in Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in London. He is currently Medical Director of St Patrick's Hospital in Dublin and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin. His BBC Radio 4 series, In the Psychiatrist's Chair, won a Sony Award in 1996 and three volumes of interviews from the series have also appeared in book form. Other books include Psychiatry in Dissent and Depression and How to Survive It, written with Spike Milligan. TV series he has conducted include Motives (BBC2) and Ireland in Mind (RTE). His next book, On Men: Crisis in Masculinity, will be published by Chatto & Windus this September.
Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is the author of three novels, The Colour of Memory, The Search and Paris Trance. He has also written a study of John Berger, Ways of Telling, as well as The Missing of the Somme, Out of Sheer Rage (shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle prize in the United States) and But Beautiful, which won the 1992 Somerset Maugham Prize and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. He has lived in New York, New Orleans, Paris and Rome and is currently based in Hove in the South of England.
Julia O'Faolain is a novelist and short-story writer. Daughter of Sean and Eileen O'Faolain, she was born in London and educated at UCD, the University of Rome, and at the Sorbonne. She has translated Italian works, including Piero Chiara's A Man of Parts (1968), and collaborated with her husband, the historian Lauro Martines, on Not in God's Image: Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians (1973). Her first fiction was the short-story collection, We Might See Sights! (1968), and her first novel was Godded and Codded (1970), followed by Women in the Wall (1975). Subsequent novels include No Country for Young Men (1980), The Irish Signora (1984), and The Judas Cloth (1992).
Dermot Keogh is Professor of History at University College, Cork. His publications include Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland; Ireland and the Vatican: The Politics and Diplomacy of Church and State, 1922-1960; Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State; Ireland and Europe: 1919-1948; and The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics. He has edited and contributed to many other publications and has been the recipient of several awards and scholarships, including the Robert Schuman Award for research, and Woodrow Wilson and Fulbright Fellowships in the United States. He has worked as a journalist with the Irish Press and with RTE.
Anne Haverty was born in Holycross, Co Tipperary, and now lives in Dublin. Her novel, One Day as a Tiger (1997), was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and was Ireland's entry
for the Aristeion Prize (1998). A winner of the Rooney Prize, she has also published a biography of Constance Markievicz, which will be reissued this year, and a collection of poems, The Beauty of the Moon, which was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She contributed to Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel and An Bileog Ban. Her second novel, The Far Side Of A Kiss, is due for publication this summer.
Mike Murphy was born in Dublin and has been the presenter of RTE's flagship arts programme, The Arts Show, for the past 12 years. He won Jacobs Awards for three televison programmes, Live Mike, Murphy's Australia and Murphy's America, as well as a Jacobs Award for his Morning Call radio show. He is a former director of the Cultural Relations Committee and was a member of the boards of ROSC and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He is also the author of a memoir, Mike and Me.
Diarmaid O Muirithe is a native of New Ross, Co Wexford. He is a former lecturer in the Department of Irish Language and Literature in UCD. He has been a Fulbright Professor of English and has lectured in US and Canadian universities. He is the author of books on a range of topics, including Anglo-Irish lexicography, and is co-editor of The Folklore of County Wexford. He has had 12 plays broadcast by RTE Radio in Irish and English and won a Jacobs Award for Radio. He writes The Irish Times's Saturday column, The Words We Use, which has been published in three books. He also writes a column for the British magazine The Oldie.
Aine Ni Ghlinn is a poet and lectures in the Fiontar Department in Dublin City University. 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/Unshed Tears. She has also written two non-fiction works for teenagers, Mna as an Gnath and Daoine agus Deithe. She received a number of Oireachtas awards and Arts Council bursaries, is a former journalist with Radio na Gaeltachta and RTE, and contributes scripts for TG4's Ros na Run.
Alan Titley 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 work has been translated into several languages, including Italian and Serbo-Croat.