Judges' Biographies

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.

Alicia Borinsky (2000)

Alicia Borinsky, born in Buenos Aires, is a novelist, poet and literary critic. Alicia Borinsky is professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature and Director of the Writing in the Americas Program at Boston University. Her critical work has helped frame the discussion about the writers of the “boom” movement in Latin America. Among her other scholarly achievements is the introduction of the figure of Macedonio Fernández, Borges’s master, the exploration of the intersection between literary theory, cultural and gender studies and numerous works about poetry, Latino writers and World literature. Alicia Borinsky has written prolifically since the 1970s. Recent works include Golpes bajos/Low Blows (bilingual edition), 2007 and Frívolas y pecadoras (bilingual, poetry) 2008.

André Brink (1999)

André Brink was born in South Africa in 1935. He was educated at Potchefstroom University  and at the Sorbonne, Paris. Profoundly influenced by the traumatic political events of 1968 in South Africa, he determined to involve himself in the opposition to apartheid, and his books have explored both the temptations of exile and the compulsion to return to South Africa and oppose the racist government. His novel Kennis von dle Aand (Looking on Darkness) was banned in 1974 and he responded by beginning to write in English as well as Afrikaans. André Brink is the author of twelve novels in English, including A Dry White Season, A Chain of Voices, An Act of Terror, and Imaginings of Sand (the latter  was short listed for the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). He has won South Africa’s CNA Award three times and was twice short listed for the Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into twenty-nine languages. André Brink is Professor of English at the University of Cape Town.

Jonathan Buckley (2005)

Jonathan Buckley was born in Birmingham, UK. He is the author of the Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto in addition to co-writing guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, and contributing to the Rough Guides to classical music and opera. His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published in 1997. Xerxes followed in 1999, Ghost MacIndoe in 2001, Invisible in 2004 and So He Takes the Dog in 2006. Since 2007 he has been an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund."

Carmen Callil (2007)

Carmen Callil was born in Melbourne in 1938 and graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BA Arts degree in History and Literature. A Doctor of Letters from Sheffield, York, Oxford Brookes and The Open University, Carmen has lived in London since 1960. She has pursued a wide-ranging career since founding the Virago Press in 1972.
Now a critic and writer, Carmen Callil's work includes: The Modern Library: The Best 200 Novels in English since 1950, written with Colm Toibin and published by Picador in April 1999; a biographical account of her family in New Writing 5, edited for the British Council by Christopher Hope and Peter Porter and Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family & Fatherland, a book about Vichy France and Louis Darquier, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in Pétain's government.

Amit Chaudhuri (2001)

Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta in 1962 and was raised for the most part in Bombay where he studied at the Elphinstone College. At 21 he went to London where he attended University College. This was followed by Balliol and Wolfson Colleges in Oxford. He was Creative Arts Fellow in the latter. His first novel, A Strange and Sublime Address (1991) won the Betty Trask Award and his second, Afternoon Raag won the 1993 Southern Arts Literature Prize and the Encore Award for best second novel. These have been followed by two further novels - Freedom Song (1998) and A New World (2000). Chaudhuri's work has appeared in various magazines including The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta and The New Yorker. Chaudhuri is also a musician, trained in Hindustani classical music. He has performed in Calcutta, Mumbai and New Delhi. He lives in Cambridge and Calcutta.

David Dabydeen (2000)

David Dabydeen was born in Guyana, South America, in 1956. He was educated at Cambridge University and University College London, and is now Professor of Literature at the University of Warwick. He has published three collections of poetry, Slave Song (winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize), Coolie Odyssey, and Turner: new and selected poems (1994), and five novels, The Intended, Dissappearance, The Counting House (short-listed for the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), The Harlot's Progress, publised in 1999 by Jonathan Cape.

Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title.
In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC Television 2004.
His latest novel Our Lady of Demerara was published in 2004. The Oxford Companion to Black British History (co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones) appeared in 2007.

Fred D'Aguiar (2001)

Fred D'Aguiar is a poet and novelist. Born in London of Guyanese parents, he lived in Guyana until he was 12, returning to London in 1972. He has written four poetry books including Bill of Rights, about the Jones Town Massacre which was shortlisted for the 1998 T.S. Elliot Prize and four novels, he latest, Feeding the Ghosts, was shortlisted for the James Tait Memorial Prize. He currently divides his time between London and Miami where he teaches Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Miami. His other work includes Bloodlines, The Longest Memory and Dear Future

Gerald Dawe (2007)

Belfast born poet Gerald Dawe has published six collections of poetry, including, most recently, The Morning Train and Lake Geneva. He is a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin where he is Lecturer in English and director of the graduate writing programme. He has edited several anthologies of Irish poetry and criticism as well as publishing volumes of his own literary essays. He lives in Dun Laoghaire.

José Luis de Juan (2008)

José Luis de Juan was born in Palma in 1956. He graduated in Law and International Relations in the universities of Barcelona and Johns Hopkins, working as a lawyer and civil servant in different organisations. Following a period of art activities, he began to publish his literary work in the 90s: six novels, short stories and two non-fiction books, as well as poetry. He has received literary awards in Spain and France. His works has been translated into English, French and Italian and presented in international literary festivals including Berlin (2004) and Edinburgh (the novel This breathing world, Arcadia 2007). He lives in Majorca.

Anita Desai (2004)

Anita Desai was born in 1937. Her father was Bengali and her mother German, and she was educated in Delhi. Her published works include Fire on the Mountain (1977) for which she won the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the 1978 National Academy of Letters Award, followed by a collection of short stories, Games at Twilight (1978), Clear Light of Day (1980) which was shortlisted for that year's Booker Prize, In Custody (1984) which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was made into a film by Merchant Ivory, Baumgartner's Bombay (1988), and Journey to Ithaca (1995). Anita is the author of two books for children, The Peacock Garden (1979) and The Village By the Sea (1982), which won the Guardian Award for Children's Fiction and was subsequently made into a film. Her latest novel, Fasting, Feasting, was published in 1999 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was followed in 2000 by a collection of short stories, Diamond Dust. Anita Desai is a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Assembly of Letters in Delhi and holds Fellowships at the Royal Society of Literature in London, the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York and Girton College, Cambridge. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Agnes Dèsarthe (2005)

Agnès Desarthe was born in 1966 in Paris, where she now lives, with
her husband - a filmmaker, and her three children. She has worked as
a translator and has published numerous books for children and
teenagers. She is the author of seven novels, three of which, Five
Photos of My Wife, Good Intentions and Chez moi have been published
in English to great acclaim. She received the Prix Inter 1996 for
her novel Un Secret Sans Importance.

Margaret Drabble (1997)

Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and educated at the Mount School, York, and Newnham College, Cambridge. She is a novelist and critic, author of thirteen novels and editor of the fifth edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985). Her biography of the novelist Sir Angus Wilson was published by Secker and Warburg in 1995, and a new novel The Witch of Exmoor (Viking), was published in October 1996. Margaret Drabble is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd, and they divide their time between London and Somerset.

Patricia Duncker (2008)

Patricia Duncker was born in Jamaica and has lived most of her life in Northern Europe. She was educated at Cambridge and Oxford and is the author of four novels : Hallucinating Foucault (1996), winner of the Dillons First Fiction Award and the McKitterick Prize, James Miranda Barry (1999), The Deadly Space Between (2002) and Miss Webster and Cherif (2006) which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She has also written two collections of short fiction, Monsieur Shoushana's Lemon Trees (1997) and Seven Tales of Sex and Death (2003). She is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Manchester

Buchi Emecheta (2001)

Novelist Buchi Emecheta was born near Lagos Nigeria in 1944. Orphaned at an early age, she spent her early childhood years being educated at a missionary school. She has lived in London since 1960. Emecheta's works deal with the portrayal of the African woman and the main characters of her novels show what is means to be a woman and mother in Nigerian society. Many of her books are semi-autobiographical. Emecheta's numerous works include The Joys of Motherhood and Head above Water.

Eibhlín Evans (2008)

Eibhlín Evans grew up in Dublin. She moved to England where she gained a PhD in English and Philosophy and taught in universities for many years. Since her return to Dublin in 2004, she has been a member of the School of English and Drama at University College Dublin where she has been involved in the recently established M.A. Degree in Creative Writing. She has published academic articles, essays and reviews and has edited a collection of essays on Irish writing. Her research has been chiefly centered on twentieth century and contemporary writing, including Irish writing and women’s writing. She is actively involved in the literary life of Dublin city. Working with Dublin City Libraries she has given talks, lectures and interviews on literary subjects and has been a key supporter of and participant in the Dublin One City One Book initiative and The Dublin Writer’s Festival. She is also a published poet, and a painter.

Almeida Faria (2007)

Almelda Faria was born in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal in 1943. A fiction writer playwright and essayist, he currently lectures in Aesthetics at the New University of Lisbon. The recipient of many prizes, he published his first novel Rumor Branco (White Noise) in 1962 at the age of 19. His other novels include A Paixão (The Passion, 1965), the first part of a trilogy set. His O Conquistador (The Conqueror, 1990) is an ironic and erotic parody which "weaves a devilish black comedy of subtle double entendres on philosophical, linguistic and ideological levels".

His books are translated into many languages, including Spanish, Franch, Italian, Dutch, German, Greek, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian and Bulgarian.

Lilian Faschinger (2007)

Lilian Faschinger was born in Carinthia, Austria in 1950. She studied English and History at Karl Franzens University, Graz, where she earned a Ph. D. in English also working there as a college lecturer.
She has worked as a literary translator and freelance writer, receiving numerous awards for both her fiction and her translations. Since 1998, she has held several writer-in-residence positions at American colleges and universities, including Dartmouth College and Washington University in St. Louis.
In addition to several plays, Lilian Faschinger has published two volumes of poetry, two collections of short stories and five novels. Her most successful novel to date, Magdalena the Sinner has been translated into 16 languages.

Suzi Feay (2000)

Suzi Feay, the distinguished journalist and critic, has been Literary Editor of The Independent on Sunday in London since 1997 and was previously the paper's Deputy Literary Editor as well as a regular columnist since 1994. In 1998, she served on the judging panel in the novel category for the prestigious Whitbread Prize for Literature. She has written about literature, theatre and the cinema for many other publications in the UK including Time Out and The New Statesman. Suzi Feay was born in Lancashire, is a graduate of the University of Leeds and now lives in London.

Greg Gatenby (1998)

Born in Toronto in 1950, Greg Gatenby is well known and respected world-wide as the Artistic Director of the Harbourfront Reading Series. Since he assumed control of the Reading Series in 1975, he has hosted readings and talks at Harbourfront by more than 2,500 authors from more than 90 nations. Greg Gatenby is the author of several books of poetry and has published a number of anthologies on subjects as diverse as dolphins and whales in art, music and literature and how foreign writers have written about Canada and Canadians. he is currently writing the Literary Guide to Toronto. In 1989 he was awarded the City of Toronto Literary Prize and in 1991 was made an honorary lifetime member of the League of Canadian Poets.

Margo Glantz (1998)

Mexican writer, critic and journalist, Margo Glantz teaches at the National Mexican University (UNAM) and has held visiting positions in the Universities of La Jolla, Irvine, Riverside, Yale, Princeton, Rice, and Berkeley, California. Margo Glantz is the author of a number of books in Spanish and her novel The Family Tree was published in English in 1991. Her latest novel, Apariciones (1996) will be translated into English and French shortly. She has won the Villaurrutia Prize for Sindrome de Naufragios and the Magda Donato prize for Las genealogias.
Margo Glantz has lectured for many years throughout Europe, Canada, the USA, and Latin America. She has two daughters, lives in Mexico City, and belongs to the Mexican Academy of Letters.

Vesna Goldsworthy (2009)

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.

Helon Habila (2008)

Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In 2002 he published his first novel, Waiting for an Angel. Waiting for an Angel has been translated into many languages including Dutch, Italian, Swedish, and French. His writing has won many prizes including the Caine Prize, 2001, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. He is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2006 he co-edited the British Council's anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in February, 2007. He currently teaches Creative Writing at the George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his family

Rita Ann Higgins(2005)

Rita Ann Higgins was born in 1955 in Galway, Ireland. She is the author of eight collections of poetry, the most recent being An Awful Racket 2001. Throw in the Vowels: New & Selected Poems is due in May 2005. She has edited Out the Clara Road: The Offaly Anthology and co-edited Word and Image: a collection of poems from Sunderland Women's Centre and Washington Bridge Centre and Fizz: poetry of resistance and challenge 2004 - a poetry anthology written by young people. Rita has also written three plays. She is a member of Aosdána.

Michael Holroyd (2002)

Michael Holroyd was born in London and educated at Eton College, though he has often claimed Maidenhead Public Library as his alma mater.
In 1964 he published his first book, a biography of writer Hugh Kingsmill, but his reputation was consolidated in 1967-68 with the publication of his life of Lytton Strachey (which playwright Christopher Hampton later used extensively when writing the screenplay for the film Carrington). Holroyd has also written biographies of Augustus John and a four-volume biography of George Bernard Shaw.
Holroyd acted as Chairman of the Society of Authors, 1973-83, and from 1985 to 1988 was president of the English branch of PEN. His awards include the 2001 Heywood Hill Literary Prize and the 2005 David Cohen Prize for literature. Holroyd is also President of the Royal Society of Literature and was knighted in the 2007 New Years' Honours List.
His latest book, A Strange Eventful History (2008), recounts the 19th-century theatrical careers of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving.
Holroyd is a Patron of Dignity in Dying. He is married to author Dame Margaret Drabble.

Wikipedia

Christopher Hope (1996)

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and educated at the Universities of Witwatersrand and Natal. He has won many prizes for his fictional works including the Pringle Award from teh English Academy of Southern Africa (1972), the Cholmondelay Award for Poetry (1977), the Whitbread Award for fiction and the 1990 PEN Award. He is another prolific writer of many types of work including television plays and contributions to many international magazines

Aamer Hussein (2008)

Aamer Hussein was born in 1955 in Karachi, Pakistan. He has lived in London since the 70s. He is the author of five collections of stories, most recently Turquoise (2002), This Other Salt (2005) and Insomnia (2007). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and lectures at the University of Southampton. He is also Director of the MA in National and International Literatures in English at the Institute of English Studies (University of London). He has reviewed for the Independent, the TLS, Literary Review and the New Statesman and was on the jury of the Commonwealth Prize (Eurasia) 2006/7.

Jennifer Johnston (2002)

Born in Dublin in 1930, Jennifer Johnston's first published novel was The Captains and the Kings (1972). Since then, she has published many more novels, including Shadows on our Skin (1977), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, and The Old Jest (1979), set in the War of Independence and winning the 1979 Whitbread Novel Award. The Old Jest was later filmed as The Dawning, starring Anthony Hopkins.

Other novels include: How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974), set in World War I, and later adapted for stage; The Invisible Worm (1991), dealing with the subject of sexual abuse, and shortlisted for the Daily Express Best Book of the Year Award; The Gingerbread Woman (2000), about a widower who has lost his wife and child to terrorists; This Is Not a Novel (2002); Grace and Truth (2005); Foolish Mortals (2007) and most recently Truth or Fiction (2009)

Jennifer Johnston also writes plays. These have included The Nightingale and Not the Lark (1980), and O Ananias, Azarias and Misael (first published in Best Radio Plays of 1989, 1990). She lives in County Derry and her novels have been published in many countries

Contemporary Writers

Lidia Jorge (1996)

Lídia Jorge is a Portuguese writer whose work is representative of a new style of writing, the so-called ‘Post Revolution Generation’. Her books have won international recognition and have been published in many countries.

Lídia Jorge was born in Portugal in 1946. Her first publication, the novel O Dia dos Prodígios [The Day of the Prodigies] (1980), is considered to be a major contribution to the new wave of modern Portuguese literature. The two novels which followed, O Cais das Merendas [The Wharf of the Parties’ Remains] (1982) and Notícia da Cidade Silvestre [The Wild Town Remembering](1984) both won the Literary Prize of the Lisbon Municipality.

However, it was with A Costa dos Murmurios [The Murmuring Coast] (1988) – a book that draws upon her experiences in colonial Africa – that the author confirmed her status as one of the leading figures in modern Portuguese literature.The 1998 O Vale da Paixão [The Painter of Birds] won a number of awards as did O Vento Assobiando nas Gruas [The Wind Whistling in the Cranes] (2002).

Lídia Jorge’s novels have also been published in Brazil and translated into Spanish, French, English, German, Italian, Greek, Hebrew and Swedish. She has also published two volumes of short stories.

In 2006 the author attended a ceremony in Germany where she was awarded the first ever International Albatroz Literature Prize by the Gunther Grass Foundation for her work to date.

In 2007 Lídia Jorge published her latest novel Combateremos a Sombra [We Shall Fight the Shadow]. She resides in Lisbon, Portugal.

Wikipedia

Brendan Kennelly (1996)

Professor Brendan Kennelly was born in Co. Kerry, Ireland and educated at Trinity College Dublin where he was Professor of Modern Literature for over thirty years until his retirement in 2005. Recipient of the A.E. Memorial Prize and best known as a poet, he is a very prolific author and has had many works published including several novels.

Brendan Kennelly is tremendously respected for his translations of Irish literature into English and is respected worldwide as a writer of emotional honesty and power. His most recent work includes poetry colletions The Little Book of Judas (2003), Familiar Strangers (2004) Now (2006) and Reservoir Voices (2009). He lives in Dublin.

Jane Koustas (2006)

Jane Koustas is currently serving as the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin. She is a Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. Professor Koustas' research interests include English-Canadian literature in translation, translation theory and practice, translation history in Canada Quebec theatre and theatre translation. She is the co-editor of two books, Théâtre sans frontières: essays on the dramatic universe of Robert Lepage with Joe Donohoe and Vision/Division: l'oeuvre de Nancy Huston with Marta Dvorak. She has served on the jury of the Governor General's Literary Awards and the Quebec Writers' Federation Translation Award.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim (2004)

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim was born in Malacca, Malaysia, in 1944 and has lived in the United States of America since 1969. She completed her Ph.D. in British and American Literature in Brandeis University in 1973. Her first collection of poems, Crossing the Peninsula (1980), received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has also published four volumes of poetry: No Man's Grove (1985); Modern Secrets (1989); Monsoon History (1994), which is a retrospective selection of her work; and What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say (1998). She is also the author of three books of short stories and a memoir, Among the White Moon Faces (1996), which received the 1997 American Book Award for non-fiction. Her first novel, Joss and Gold, was published in 2001. Her co-edited anthology, The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Woman's Anthology received the 1990 American Book Award. She has published two critical studies, Nationalism and Literature: Writing in English from the Philippines and Singapore (1993) and Writing South East Asia in English: Against the Grain (1994) and has edited / co-edited many volumes and two special issues of journals. Her work has appeared in many journals and she is the recipient of many honours. She is currently professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Morgan Llwelyn (2003)

Morgan Llywelyn is an award-winning novelist, well-known for her historical novels about Ireland and the Celtic peoples including the international best-seller Lion of Ireland. Five of her novels have been optioned for film. Her work also includes a biography of Xerxes of Persia and four books for children. Among her literary awards are the Washington D.C. Cultural Achievement Award, The Best Novel of the Year Award (PENWoman International), Poetry in Prose Award (Galician Society), Book of the Year for Young Adults (The American Libraries Association), the Saint Brendan Medal (the Brendan Society) and two Bisto Awards for her novels for children. American, of Irish descent, she now lives in Ireland.

Deirdre Madden (2003)

Deirdre Madden is an acclaimed novelist from Northern Ireland. Her novels include The Birds of the Innocent Wood, for which she was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, Remembering Light and Stone, Nothing is Black and One By One in the Darkness, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1997. She was writer-in-residence in University College Cork in 1994 and Writer Fellow in Trinity College, Dublin in 1997. She has travelled widely in Europe and has spent extended periods of time in both France and Italy. Authenticity, her latest book, was published in August 2002.

Bodil Malmsten (1999)

Poet and novelist Bodil Malmsten was born in 1944 in the north of Sweden. A prolific writer, since 1977 she has published seven collections of poetry, two novels, one collection of short stories, two collections of prose, and three plays. Her first novel, Den dagen kastanjerna slår ut är jag långt härifrån (On the day when the chestnut trees burst into blossom ) was nominated for the August (Strindberg) Prize and has just been published in Denmark. Her second novel, Nästa som rör mig (The Next One to Touch me) was awarded both the Aniara and the SKTF Prizes and has been published in Turkish translation: Dutch and French translations will appear in 1999. Bodil Malmsten has also received many awards for her poetry and her most recent collection, Inte med den eld jag har nu (Not with the Fire in me now), takes its title from a line in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. A translator of English language plays and musicals, including 'A Chorus Line', into Swedish, she is a regular contributor to television and radio programmes in Sweden. She is divorced with one daughter and lives in Stockholm.

Alberto Manguel (1999)

Alberto Manguel was born in Buenos Aires and is now a Canadian citizen. He is a writer, translator, critic and anthologist. His books include News from a Foreign Country (novel), The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (with Gianni Guadalupi), A History of Reading, and Into the Looking-Glass Wood: essays on Words and the World. In 1996 he was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. He contributes regularly to the Globe & Mail (Toronto), the Times Literary Supplement (London), the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm) among others. He is currently the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Calgary .

Colum McCann (2001)

Colum McCann's fifth novel, "Let the Great World Spin” 2009. was the winner of the National Book Critics circle award 2009. He is the author of two collections of short stories and five novels, including This Side of Brightness, Dancer and Zoli all of which were international best-sellers. His fiction has been published in 30 languages.

Colum was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Allison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian. He teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Nathan Englander.

Meadbh McGuckian (2001)

Poet Medbh McGuicken was born in Belfast in 1950, where she now lives with her husband and four children. She graduated from Queens University in Belfast in English and later became the first woman poet to be named Writer in Residence. She has published ten collections of poetry, the most recent being Selected Poems in 1997 and Shelmalier in 1998. She has also won numerous Awards for her work including the Eric Grogory Award (1980) and the Rooney Prize (1982).

Paul Muldoon (1998)

Paul Muldoon was born in 1951 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and educated in Armagh and at the Queen’s University, Belfast. From 1973 to 1986 he worked in Belfast as a radio and television producer for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he taught at Berkeley, Columbia, and the University of Massachusetts. He now teaches in the Creative Writing program at Princeton University.  
Described by Seamus Heaney as “one of the era’s true originals”, Paul Muldoon has published several books of poetry including, most recently,  The Annals of Chile (1994) and New Selected Poems 1968-94 (1996), which won the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize. He is also an editor, translator, and librettist.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (1997)

The daughter of native Irish speakers, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill was born in Lancashire in 1952. The family returned to Ireland in 1957 and she grew up there. After graduating from University College Cork she moved to Holland with her Turkish husband and then lived for a number of years in Turkey. She has lived in Ireland since 1980 and has become established as one of Ireland's foremost Irish language poets. Her work has been translated into many languages, including French, German, Polish, Italian, Norwegian, Estonian and Japanese and has won many international awards. She has been described as one of the most innovative and revitalising voices in modern Irish poetry.

Knut Ødegård (2004)

Knut Ødegård was born in Molde, Norway in 1945. He studied theology and philology in Norway and England and was awarded a D. Litt in 1999. His first volume of poetry, The Dreamer, The Wanderer and The Well, was published in 1967, and since then he has published twelve volumes of poetry, which have been translated into many languages, the most recent being The Stephensen House (2003). He is also the author of two novels, a play, non-fiction works and essays and has translated ten volumes of poetry. He has been a literary critic in Aftenposten, the leading newspaper of Norway, since 1968, a position he still holds and is deeply involved in publishing and literary life in both Norway and Iceland. In 1989, he was appointed a lifetime state Scholar by the parliament of Norway. He is the holder of many awards and distinctions, among them the Anders Jahre Cultural Prize, Norway's major cultural distinction, awarded in 2001. He was knighted by the President of Iceland in 1987 for services to literature and knighted by the King of Norway in 1997 with the Royal Oder of Merit.

Mary O'Donnell (2006)

Mary O'Donnell is a poet, novelist, translator and critic based in Co. Kildare, Ireland. She has published four volumes of poetry, most recently September Elegies in 2003 and has presented several series of poetry programmes for the Irish national broadcaster, RTE. Her critically acclaimed third novel, The Elysium Testament, appeared in 1999. Her work has been published in literary magazines and journals in Ireland, the UK and the USA and anthologised in collections in Ireland and abroad. She recently presented 'Crossing the Lines', a series of radio programmes on European poetry in translation. In 2001, Mary was elected to Aosdána, an affiliation of creative artists in Ireland.

Julia O'Faolain (1999)

Born in London, the daughter of Sean and Eileen (Gould) O’Faolain, Julia O’Faolain was educated at University College, Dublin, the University of Rome, and the Sorbonne, Paris. She has worked as a writer, language teacher, editor and translator and has lived in France, Italy, and the USA. Among her novels are Women in the Wall, No Country for Young Men, The Obedient wife, The Irish Signorina and The Judas Cloth. Her short story collections include  Man in the Cellar and Daughters of Passion, and her work has also featured in many anthologies. Julia O’Faolain is married to American historian Lauro Martines, and has one son: she lives in London.

Andrew O'Hagan (2006)

Andrew O'Hagan was born in 1968 in Glasgow. In 1995 he wrote The Missing and in 1999 he published his first novel, Our Fathers, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and was winner of the Holtby Prize for Fiction. His latest novel Personality, published in 2003, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Andrew also won the E.M.Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Since 2000 Andrew has been a Unicef Ambassador.

John Quinn (2004)

John Quinn, from Ballivor Co. Meath, recently retired from RTE Radio after a career spanning twenty-five years, during which he won various awards in Ireland, Tokyo and New York. He presented and produced 'The Open Mind' since 1989. Other programmes which he has presented and produced include 'This Place Speaks to Me', 'My Education' (also published in book format), 'My Millennium', 'Is There Life After Work?' and various documentaries. He is the author of four works of children's fiction, including The Summer of Lily and Esmé, which won the Bisto Book of the Year Award in 1992; Generations of the Moon (1995), a novel; and the editor of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (1996), My Education (1997) and The Open Mind Guest Lectures (1999).His most recent work, Sea of Love, Sea of Loss, a memoir, was published in 2003. He was awarded an honorary D. Litt. by the University of Limerick, Ireland, in February 2003.

Nino Ricci (2005)

Nino Ricci was born in Ontario, Canada and has taught both in Canada and abroad. He now lives in Toronto, where he writes full time. He is a past president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN, a writers' human rights organization that works for freedom of expression. He is the author of four award-winning novels, Lives of the Saints, winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, In A Glass House, Where She Has Gone and, most recently, Testament.

Milan Richter (2005)

Milan Richter is a poet, translator and publisher, born in Bratislava in 1948. He has published eight volumes of poetry including From Behind the Velvet Curtains, 1997, An Angel with Black Feathers, 2000 and The Wrecked Temple in Me, 2002. He was forbidden to publish for more than ten years and during this time he devoted all his creative activity to translation. He has served as chairman of Slovak Literary Translators Society and as vice-chairman of the Slovak PEN Centre. He has been director of the Jan Smrek International Literary Festival in Bratislava which he launched in 2000

Michelle Roberts (2004)

Michèle Roberts, half-English and half-French, was born in 1949. She is the author of eleven novels: A Piece of the Night (1978), The Visitation (1983), The Wild Girl (1984), The Book of Mrs. Noah (1987), In the Red Kitchen (1990), Daughters of the House (1992), Flesh and Blood (1994), Impossible Saints (1997), Fair Exchange (1999), The Looking Glass (2000) and, most recently, The Mistressclass (2003). She has also published short story collections, During Mother's Absence (1993) and Playing Sardines (2003), three books of poetry including All the Selves I Was: Selected Poems 1986-1994 (1995), and a book of essays, On Food, Sex and God: On Inspiration and Writing (1998). Daughters of the House was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize and won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1993. She is a regular book reviewer and broadcaster, and teaches the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia. In December 2001 she was appointed Chevalier de l'Order des Arts at des Lettres by the French Government. A staunch republican, she refused an OBE in 2003.

Paolo Ruffilli (2006)

Paolo Ruffilli was born in 1949 and attended the University of Bologna, where he studied modern literature. After a period of teaching, he became editor with the publisher Garzanti in Milan, and is presently the general editor of the Edizioni del Leone in Venice. Since 1972 he has published nine volumes of poetry. Among these are the prize-winning Piccola colazione, Diario di Normandia, Camera oscura, and La gioia e il lutto which was published in English translation as Joy and Mourning in 2004. He has also published a number of novels including Preparativi per la partenza in 2003, as well as essays and translations from English

James Ryan (2009)

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.

Josyane Savigneau (2000)

Josyane Savigneau, 48, is cultural editor of one of Europe's most influential newspapers, Le Monde, in Paris. Her biography of renowned French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, Marguerite Yourcenar: l'invention d'une vie, was published by Gallimard in 1990, and in English translation by the Chicago University Press in 1993. Josyane Savigneau's book on the life of Carson McCullers, Carson McCullers: un coeur de jeune fille, was published by Stock in 1995, and will be published in English translation by Houghton Mifflin in 2000.

Tom Shapcott (1999)

Tom Shapcott was born in 1935 in Ipswich, Australia, one of twins. Initially a Public Accountant, he published 9 volumes of poetry, an art monograph and edited 3 anthologies while still in that practice. In 1978 he became a full-time writer but joined the Literature Board of the Australia Council as a Director in 1998, becoming Executive Director of the National Book Council in 1992. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at Adelaide University (South Australia). He has published 6 adult novels, 2 volumes of short stories, 4 children’s novels and still publishes poetry. In 1989 he received an Hon.D.Litt. from Macquarie University (New South Wales), was made an Officer in the Order of Australia, and awarded the Gold Wreath at the Struga International Poetry Festival (Macedonia). He has 4 adult children, 2 grandchildren, and has not prepared an Income Tax Return (apart from his own, and family members) since 1978.  He was written over 20 libretti for a number of Australian composers and considers himself a failed musician.

Steinunn Sigurdartottin (2002)

Icelandic novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright. Born in 1950 in Reykjavik. She graduated from University College Dublin in 1972. She has published six novels, six volumes of poetry, two collections of short stories, a book for children, and a book about Vigdis Finnbogadottir, former President of Iceland. She has also translated poetry and prose. Although none of her novels has been translated into English, some poetry and short stories have appeared in collections of Icelandic work in English. Her work has been translated into all the Scandinavian languages, as well as German, French and Dutch. Her novel Timapjofurinn (Thief of Time) was made into a film in France in 1999. She has received several Icelandic literary awards. She has lived in various places in Europe, the U.S. and Japan, and is currently based in Paris.

Amritjit Singh (2003)

Amritjit Singh, Professor of English at Rhode Island College, is a freelance writer, editor, translator and book reviewer. In 2002, he was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at the JFK Institute of North American Studies at Freie University, Berlin. He has served as President, MELUS (The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States), 1994-1997 and serves currently as President of both the South Asian Literary Association (SALA) and the US Chapter of ACLALS (Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies). His poems, reviews, translations and op-ed pieces have appeared in many journals. He has authored and co-edited over a dozen books, including India: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing (1983), Memory, Narrative and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures (1994) and Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaaissance Reader (2002).

Josef Skvorecky (1997)

Josef Skvorecký was born in 1924 in Nachod, in Czechoslovakia. His first major work The Cowards was published in Czechoslovakia in 1958. He left there in 1968 and moved to Canada, where he was editor-in-chief of the exile publishing house Sixty-Eight Publishers. Prior to the Soviet-led invasion Skvorecký was already established as a novelist, essayist, editor, script-writer and translator. He won the 1980 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1984 Canadian Governor General's Award. Most of his works were published in English but since 1989 have been republished in the Czech Republic.

Ilan Stavans (2003)

Ilan Stavans, a Mexican writer and academic, is currently the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, Massechusetts, USA. His books include The Hispanic Condition (1996), Art and Anger (1996), The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998), and On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (2001), as well as a dictionary of Spanglish. He is the recipient of the Latino Literature Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many honours. His work has been translated into half a dozen languages.

Robert Taylor (1996)

Robert Taylor was born in Massachusetts and educated at Colgate and Brown Universities. He is a Professor of English at Wheaton College, Massachusetts where he has taught fiction since 1961. Robert Taylor, the author of several novels, is a very accomplished critic and writer on art, music and theatre.

Timothy Taylor (2009)

Timothy Taylor is an award winning novelist and journalist. His novels - Stanley Park (2001) and Story House (2006) - were national bestsellers and he has received nominations for numerous literary prizes including the Giller Prize, the Writers Trust Fiction Prize, and both the Vancouver and British Columbia Book Awards. His short story collection Silent Cruise (2002) earned him the Journey Prize and second place in the Danuta Gleed Award, given to the best collection of stories published in Canada in a given year.

Taylor is also the winner of three National Magazine Awards. He lives in Vancouver where he splits his time between fiction, writing for screen and journalism. He's a contributing editor at en Route Magazine and Vancouver Magazine, and a columnist for the Globe and Mail. His writing on arts and culture have also appeared in Walrus Magazine, Food & Wine, The National Post, The Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Audrey Thomas (2002)

Born and raised in New York State but has lived and worked on Canada's west coast since 1959. Her short story collections include Two in the Bush and other Stories, Real Mothers, Goodbye Harold, Good Luck and The Wild Blue Yonder, which won the B.C. Book Prize. She is also the author of a number of highly acclaimed novels, including Latakia, Mrs Blood, Songs My Mother Taught Me, Intertidal Life (which was nominated for a Governor General's Award and won the B.C. Book Prize), Graven Images, Coming Down From Wa (which was nominated for a Governor General's Award and won the B.C. Book Prize) and, most recently, Isobel Gunn, which was included in the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award longlist in 2001. She has also won the Canada-Australia Prize and the Marian Engel Award. She has taught at a number of Canadian universities and holds honorary doctorates from Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. She lives on Galiano Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Marta Tikkanen (1998)

Märta Tikkanen was born into a Swedish speaking family in Helsinki, Finland, in 1935. She has worked as a journalist, raised her children, and was Director of an adult education institute before becoming a full time writer in 1979, the year she won the Literary Prize for Northern Women.
Märta Tikkanen has written novels, plays, and poetry, as well as editing a number of anthologies. Her work has been translated into 24 languages. She lives in Helsinki.

Colm Tóibín (2000)

Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of the novels The South (shortlisted for the Whitbread first novel award), The Heather Blazing (Winner of the Encore Award in 1993) and The Story of the Night (Winner of the Ferro-Grumley Prize and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1998). He has also written the non-fiction books Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe, and with Carmen Callil The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950. He lives in Dublin. His latest work, The Blackwater Lightship, was been shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize.

Jane Urquhart (1997)

Jane Urquhart was born in Little Long Lac, Ontario, and grew up in Toronto. The Whirlpool, her first novel, was published after a book of short stories and three books of poetry. It went on to be published internationally as did her succeeding novels, Changing Heaven and Away, which won Canada's Trillium Award and was one of the books shortlisted for the 1996 International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award. Jane Urquhart is currently writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. She has served on numerous Award Juries, including the Canada - Australia Prize, and is a"Chevalier" of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.

Luisa Valenzuela (1996)

Luisa Valenzuela was born and educated in Argentina and is the daughter of the writer Luisa Mercedes Levinson. Being born into a literary family she became a journalist at the age of 17 and had her first book of fiction published a year later. Since then most of her books have been translated into English. The winner of the Fulbright scholarship (1969-1970) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983). Luisa Valenzuela travels extensively throughout the world to lecture at many universities and seats of learning. She was formerly Writer-in Residence at the New York University and Columbia University.

Jorge Volpi (2002)

Born in Mexico in 1968. Has a B.A. in Law and an M.A. in Mexican literature and is a PhD candidate in Philology at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He is the author of seven novels and an essay about the Mexican intellectuals in 1968. In 1999 he received the Biblioteca Breve Prize for his novel In Search of Klingsor, which has been translated into many languages. He was Visiting Writer at Emory University, Atlanta in the first semester of 2000. He has lectured in many universities: The National Autonomous, Las Americas of Puebla and Iberoamericana in Mexico; San José in Costa Rica; Salamanca and Barcelona in Spain; Milan Central and Milan Catholic in Italy and Cornell, Yale, Duke, Tulane and UCLA in the U.S.A. His is currently Cultural Attaché and Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Paris, France.

Shawn Wong (1997)

Shawn Wong was born in 1949 in Oakland California. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington in Seattle, Shawn Wong is the editor of a number of anthologies of Asian - American Literature and is the author of the award-winning novel Homebase. His most recent novel is American Knees. He has also served on a number of prestigious award committees, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, and is one of the editors of the compendium of American Book Award selections published in 1992.

Allen Young (1998)

Novelist, poet essayist and scriptwriter Al Young was born in Mississippi, USA, in 1939 and attended the University of Michigan and later the University of California, Berkeley. An energetic and prolific author and editor, Al Young’s work is published in more than 12 languages. He hasught at Stanford, and at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has held visiting positions at the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, and the University of Arkansas. Al Young has travelled throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and the USA, lecturing on American culture, the arts, music, myth, creativity and human survival. The recipient of Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, he lives near San Francisco.