Simon Armitage was born in 1963 and lives in Yorkshire. He has won numerous prizes for his nine collections of poetry which include Selected Poems and The Universal Home Doctor (Faber & Faber). His latest novel, The White Stuff, is published by Penguin in 2004. He is also a broadcaster and has written extensively for radio, television and film, and in 2003 received the Ivor Novello award for songwriting. He teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939, and has become Canada’s most eminent novelist and poet. She has published over thirty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye and Alias Grace, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and The Blind Assassin, which won the 2000 Booker Prize. Her books have been translated into thirty-three languages. She lives in Toronto.
Paul Bailey is the author of At the Jerusalem (1967) which won the Somerset Maugham Award, Trespasses (1970), A Distant Likeness (1973), Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Old Soldiers (1980), Sugar Cane (1993) and Uncle Rudolf (2002). He was the first recipient of the E. M. Forster award and won a George Orwell Prize for his essay ‘The Limitations of Despair’.
John Banville’s latest book is Prague Pictures: Portraits of a City (Bloomsbury, September 2003). He lives in Dublin, and tries to avoid doing public readings.
Nicola Barker was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1966. Her work includes Love Your Enemies (David Higham Prize for Fiction and joint winner of the Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Fiction), Reversed Forecast, Small Holdings, Heading Inland (1997 John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize), Five Miles From Outer Hope, Wide Open (winner of the 2000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award) and Behindlings. She was recently named as one of the 20 Best Young British Novelists by Granta.
Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels. His collection of stories, The Lemon Tree, will appear in March 2004.
William Boyd is the author of eight novels, the most recent being Any Human Heart.
Michael Bracewell is the author of six novels, including Saint Rachel and Perfect Tense. He has also published two works of non-fiction: a study of Englishness in popular culture, entitled England Is Mine, and a selection of journalism, The Nineties. He contributes to Frieze magazine and The Los Angeles Times, and is currently researching a biography of the art rock group, Roxy Music.
André Brink was born in South Africa in 1935. He is the author of fourteen novels in English, including An Instant in the Wind, A Dry White Season, A Chain of Voices, and The Rights of Desire. He has won South Africa’s most important literary prize, the CNA Award, three times, and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into thirty languages.
John Burnside has published eight books of poetry, including Feast Days, winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and The Asylum Dance, which won the Whitbread Poetry Prize. His prose work includes four novels and a collection of stories. He lives in East Fife, with his wife and son.
Ciaran Carson is the author of eight collections of poems and four works of prose. His novel, Shamrock Tea, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and he has won several literary awards, including the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His translation of Dante’s Inferno was published by Granta Books in 2002, and a book of new poems, Breaking News, by Gallery Press and Wake Forest University Press in 2003. He lives in Belfast.
Jonathan Coe has written the novels What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep and The Rotters’ Club, among others.
Billy Collins’ most recent collection is Nine Horses (Picador, 2002). He was appointed United States Poet Laureate for 2001–2003. He lives in Westchester County, New York.
Louis de Bernières’ first three novels are The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (both of which won Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. He was selected as one of the 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1993, and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin won the 1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book.
Poet Michael Donaghy was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1954. His most recent collections are Dances Learned Last Night (Poems 1975–1995) (Picador, 2000) and Conjure (Picador, 2000). He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
Mark Doty’s six books of poems include My Alexandria, which won the T. S. Eliot Prize in the UK and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in the USA. He is also the author of three books of non-fiction, among them Heaven’s Coast, which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for memoir. He lives in New York City and teaches at the University of Houston in Texas.
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1959. His first novel, The Commitments, was published to great critical acclaim in 1987 and was made into a very successful film by Alan Parker. The Snapper, published in 1990, was also made into a film. The Van was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a film. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, which won the Booker Prize in 1993, is the largest-selling winner in the history of the prize.
Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. After a brief career as an actress with the Royal Shakespeare Company she became a full-time writer, and has published fifteen novels. The most recent is The Seven Sisters. She also edited the fifth edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985) of which a fully revised version (sixth edition) appeared in 2000. She is married to Michael Holroyd.
Geoff Dyer’s books include But Beautiful (winner of a Somerset Maugham Prize), Paris Trance, Out of Sheer Rage (a finalist, in America, for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award) and, most recently, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be. Bothered to Do It. He is a recipient of a 2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship.
Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta and the Paris Review. Her collection, The Portable Virgin, won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Novels include The Wig My Father Wore and What Are You Like? which won the Encore Prize and was shortlisted for the Whitbread prize. Her new novel, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2002.
Paul Farley has published two collections of poetry with Picador: 1998′s The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You won a Forward Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award; The Ice Age received the 2002 Whitbread Prize for Poetry. A former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, he lives in Lancashire.
Vicki Feaver was born in Nottingham in 1943. She has published two collections of poetry. Close Relatives (Seeker, 1981) and The Handless Maiden (Cape, 1994) which was awarded a Heinemann Prize and shortlisted for the Forward Prize. A selection of her work is also included in the Penguin Modern Poets series. She lives on the edge of the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh.
Janice Galloway’s highly acclaimed first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, was published in 1990, since when she has won a number of prestigious literary awards, including the McVitie’s Prize (for Foreign Parts) and the E. M. Forster Award. She has also written drama, short stories, opera and poems and has been published in seven languages. A major commission with Anne Bevan, Rosengarden, will appear in 2004. She has one son and lives in Glasgow.
Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954, brought up in London and now lives outside the town of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. He occasionally makes films – Put to the Test won the Royal Television Society documentary award in 1999 – and otherwise he writes. His play 10 Rounds was performed in London in 2002 and his novel August ‘44 will be published in the autumn of 2003. He is married and has five children.
Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool in 1966, and now lives in Wales. He is the author of Grits, Sheepshagger, Kelly + Victor and Stump, all published by Jonathan Cape. He is currently at work on a new novel Wreckage and is completing a collection of stories. Further Education.
Thorn Gunn was born in 1929 in Gravesend and has lived since 1954 in California. His first book of poetry was Fighting Terms (1954) and his most recent Boss Cupid (2000).
Hugo Hamilton was born and grew up in Dublin. He is the author of five highly acclaimed novels, Surrogate City, The Last Shot and The Love Test (Faber), Head-banger and Sad Bastard (Seeker), one collection of short stories and a memoir, The Speckled People (Fourth Estate). He has worked as a writer-in-residence at many leading universities, including most recently at Trinity College, Dublin. He has just returned to Ireland from a DAAD scholarship in Berlin.
David Harsent’s most recent collection of poems, Marriage, was shortlisted for the Forward and T. S. Eliot Prizes. He is currently working on the libretto for a full-length opera for the Royal Opera House (music by Harrison Birtwistle).
Carl Hiaasen’s novels include Strip Tease, Basket Case and, most recently, Hoot. He seldom leaves his home state of Florida, except when he is forced by ruthless publishers to go on book tours.
Michael Holroyd has written biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw, and also an autobiography, Basil Street Blues, he is president of the Royal Society of Literature.
A. L. Kennedy was born in the north-east of Scotland, home of mortification. She is the author of several novels and collections of short stories and also writes for the press, film, TV and stage. She is now, and will remain, thoroughly ashamed of herself.
John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He was brought up in the Far East and educated in England. His first two novels, The Debt to Pleasure and Mr Phillips, have been translated into more than twenty languages. Fragrant Harbour, his most recent novel, was published in 2002. He is married with two children and lives in London.
James Lasdun’s most recent book is The Horned Man, a novel. He was born in London and now lives with his family in upstate New York.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including The Fortress of Solitude. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Michael Longley’s most recent collection, The Weather in japan (2000), won the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Irish Times Poetry Prize. He received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and the Wilfred Owen Award in 2003. A new collection, Snow Water, will be published in 2004.
Thomas Lynch’s books include Grimalkin & Other Poems, Still Life in Milford, The Undertaking, and Bodies in Motion and at Rest. He lives in Milford, Michigan, and Moveen, Co. Clare.
Patrick McCabe’s novels include The Butcher Boy (1992) which was the winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was a highly acclaimed film directed by Neil Jordan, and Breakfast on Pluto which was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize. His new novel, Call Me the Breeze, was published in September 2003. He lives in Sligo with his wife and two daughters.
Elizabeth McCracken’s most recent publication is Niagara Falls All Over Again. She has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and awarded prestigious grants by the Guggenheim Foundation, amongst others. Granta recently counted her amongst the 20 best American writers under 40.
Val McDermid was born in Scotland. She has published eighteen crime novels, a short story collection and a non-fiction book. Her books are translated into over twenty languages and have won many awards, including the Gold Dagger, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Grand Prix des Romans d’Aventure.
Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast but now lives in Glasgow. He has published four collections of short stories and four novels (Grace Notes was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). He has written versions of his fiction for other media – radio plays, television plays, screenplays.
Duncan McLean has published fiction (Bucket of Tongues, Bunker Man) and non-fiction (Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys) and written for TV, radio and theatre. He runs an off-licence in the Orkney Islands.
Glyn Maxwell’s latest book of poetry is The Nerve (Picador, 2002). He lives in New York City, and currently teaches at Princeton and Columbia. He is Poetry Editor of the New Republic.
Claire Messud was born in the United States in 1966, and educated at Yale and Cambridge, her first novel. When the World Was Steady, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1996. Her second novel, The Last Life, won the Encore Prize. She lives in Washington.
Karl Miller has been literary editor of the Spectator and the New Statesman, editor of the Listener, and founding editor of the London Review of Books. From 1974 to 1992 he was Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. Among his books are Cockburn’s Millennium, Double, and two instalments of autobiography, Rebecca’s Vest and Dark Horses. His life of James Hogg, Electric Shepherd, has just been published.
Deborah Moggach is the author of fourteen novels including Tulip Fever, Final Demand, Porky and Seesaw. She has also written two books of short stories and several TV dramas. She lives in London.
Rick Moody is the author, most recently, of a collection of stories, Demonology, and a memoir, The Black Veil.
Andrew Motion is the Poet Laureate and Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College. His most recent collection of poems is Public Property (2002); in 2003 he published his biographical fantasy The Invention of Dr Cake.
Paul Muldoon is the author, most recently, of Moy Sand and Gravel, for which he won the 2003 Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize.
Julie Myerson was born in Nottingham in 1960 and is the author of Sleepwalking, The Touch, Me and the Fatman, Laura Bluntly and, most recently. Something Might Happen. She lives in London with the writer and director Jonathan Myerson and their three children.
Edna O’Brien is the author of twenty-three books including House of Splendid Isolation, Down by the River and, most recently, In The Forest. She is the recipient of the American National Arts Gold Medal for Literature and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts.
Maggie O’Farrell was born in Northern Ireland, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. She has worked as a waitress, chambermaid, cycle courier, teacher, arts administrator and journalist. She is the author of two novels. After You’d Gone and My Lover’s Lover; her third. The Distance Between Us, will be published in spring 2004.
Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968. His most recent novel is Personality. He recently received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Michael Ondaatje’s works include Anil’s Ghost, The English Patient, In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, and his memoir. Running in the Family. His works of poetry include The Cinnamon Peeler and Handwriting. His most recent book is The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film.
Sean O’Reilly was born in Deny in Northern Ireland. He has published a book of short stories. Curfew, and a novel, Love and Sleep. A new novel, The Swing of Things, will appear in February 2004.
Chuck Palahnuik’s best-known novel to date is Fight Club, which was made into a major film. His other works include Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Lullaby and Choke. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Don Paterson was born in Dundee and works as a musician and editor. He also teaches on the Creative Writing M.Litt. at St Andrews University, his most recent book of poems is Landing Light (Faber 2003).
D. B. C. Pierre is a British author born in Australia and raised in Mexico, the UK and USA. He has since worked in the arts in a dozen countries worldwide, finally settling in London to write his first novel, Vernon God Little. He is currently writing in Ireland.
Darryl Pinckney, a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of a novel, High Cotton.
Charles Simic has published sixteen collections of his own poetry, five books of essays, a memoir, and numerous books of translations. He has received many literary awards for his poems and translations, including the MacArthur Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize. Voice at 3 A.M., his selected and new poems, was published by Harcourt this spring.
Matthew Sweeney’s most recent publications include Selected Poems (Cape, 2002), and a children’s novel, Fox (Bloomsbury, 2002). A new book of poems, Sanctuary, is forthcoming from Cape in September 2004, and he is currently finishing a much-delayed book of stories.
Rupert Thomson is the author of six novels, Dreams of Leaving, The Gates of Hell, Air and Fire, The Insult, Soft, and The Book of Revelation. His seventh novel, Divided Kingdom, will be published by Bloomsbury in September 2004.
Adam Thorpe’s latest novel, No Telling, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2003, as was his fourth poetry collection, Nine Lessons from the Dark. He lives in France with his wife and three children.
Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of the novels The South, which won the Irish Times First Novel Award 1991, The Heather Blazing, winner of the 1992 Encore Award, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize. He has also written a number of non-fiction books, including Homage to Barcelona. He lives in Dublin.
William Trevor was born in County Cork in 1928. He is the author of many novels, most recently The Story of Lucy Gault, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 1977 he was awarded an honorary CBE for his valuable services to literature, and in 2002 he received an honorary knighthood. He is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and now lives in Devon.
Alan Warner is from Scotland, has lived in Ireland for six years and has written four novels: Morvern Collar, which was made into a feature film, These Demented Lands, The Sopranos and The Man Who Walks (all Vintage). A fifth novel, The Oscillator will be published in early 2005 by Jonathan Cape. Alan Warner was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2003.
Irvine Welsh is from Edinburgh. His first novel, Trainspotting, was published in 1993. Since then he has written a collection of stories, The Acid House, a number of film and drama projects, and five further novels, most recently Porno (2002) which is being filmed. He currently lives in San Francisco.
Louise Welsh was born in London in 1965 and read history at Glasgow University, and completed an M.Litt. at Strathclyde and Glasgow University. She spent much of the last ten years as a bookseller in Glasgow. Her first novel, The Cutting Room, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award, won the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger, the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award and jointly won the 2002 Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.
Hugo Williams was born in 1942. He writes the Freelance column in the Times Literary Supplement. His Collected Poems were published by Faber in 2002. No Particular Place to Co is reprinted by Gibson Square Books.
John Hartley Williams has published eight collections of poetry. His last collection was Spending Time with Walter (Cape, 2001). A romance, Mystery in Spider-ville, was reissued by Vintage in 2003. His most recent publication is North Sea Improvisation – available from the poet at www.johnhartleywilliams.de
James Wood was born in 1965. He has received acclaim as one of the most prominent critics of his generation. From 1991 to 1995 he was Chief Literary Critic of the Guardian, in London, and since then has been a Senior Editor of the New Republic in Washington DC. His reviews and essays appear regularly in that magazine, in the New Yorker and the London Review of Books. He has published one novel, The Book Against Cod, and a collection of essays, The Broken Estate; a second collection, The Irresponsible Self, will appear in 2004.