Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame (29 page)

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.