International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009

Judging Panel

Gabrielle Alioth was born 1955 in Basel, Switzerland, and having studied economics (M.A.) and the history of art worked in econometric forecasting before emigrating to Ireland in 1984.
Her first novel Der Narr (The Fool) was published in 1990. It received the Hamburg literary award for best first novel. Her seventh and most recent novel The Bride from Byzantium appeared in 2008. She also writes children´s and travel books.
Gabrielle does extensive reading tours in Europe, India, Canada and the United States. She was a member of the Irish delegation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1996 and member of the Swiss delegation in 1998. She was also Guest lecturer at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (1997) and at the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, (2002); and Writer in residence at University College Dublin (2005/6). Since 2004 she has been a lecturer at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. She lives in Julianstown, County Meath.

Rachel Billington worked in television in London and New York before taking up full-time writing. Her first novel All Things Nice is set in New York.
She has written nineteen adult novels, four childrens’ novels, five religious books for children and three non-fiction books. Her latest novel is Lies & Loyalties published in 2008. She has also written and continues to write journalism for newspapers both in the UK and the US, including a three year stint as a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph.
Rachel was President of English PEN, the writers organisation from 1998-2001 and remains a Vice-president. During her time as President she initiated PEN’s Readers & Writers Programme which sends books and writers to meet readers in schools and prisons. She is a Trustee of the Longford Trust which was set up in memory of her father, Lord Longford. In 1991 Rachel became a member of the editorial team of Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners. She now writes a monthly page.

Born in 1961 in Belgrade, Vesna Goldsworthy was an acclaimed poet and radio presenter when she left Yugoslavia for England in 1986. Since then, she has worked in UK publishing, for the BBC World Service, and as a university teacher. She is currently Reader in English and Creative Writing at Kingston University. She reviews for publications in Europe and North America, and has edited Writing Worlds 1: The Norwich Exchanges (2006), a book of conversations with international writers. Her first book, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (Yale, 1998) is on the reading lists of some sixty universities world-wide. Her second, a memoir entitled Chernobyl Strawberries, was published by Atlantic in March 2005 to broad critical acclaim. It was serialized in The Times, and read by Vesna herself as Book of the Week on the BBC’s Radio Four. It has been a bestseller in a number of European countries.

James Ryan is a native of Rathdowney, Co Laois and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. His postgraduate studies, also at Trinity, focused primarily on creative development. His first novel, Home from England, was published by Phoenix House, London in 1995. Dismantling Mr Doyle followed in 1997 and his third novel, Seeds of Doubt, was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2001. South of the Border, his most recent novel was short-listed fro the 2008 Kerry Group Literary prize.  He is a lecturer in the School of English, Drama and Film in UCD, currently directing the postgraduate programme in creative writing.

Timothy Taylor

Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, non-voting chair of the judging panel, is a former Chief Judge of a US Court of Appeals and brings a wealth of experience from sixteen years on the bench. His first novel, The Majority Rules, was published in 2005.  His second novel of his political thriller trilogy, The Report to the Judicicary, was published in 2008. Judge Sullivan is currently a senior partner in Freeh Group Intenational, a global consultant group of former judges based in Washington DC: Wilmington, Delaware; London and Rome.