International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award

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.

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2004 Judging Panel
Anita Desai © Robert Meech The Independent	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.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim	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.
Knut Ødegård	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.
John Quinn	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.
Michèle Roberts	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.
Eugene Sullivan	Eugene R. Sullivan, non-voting Chair of the judging panel, is a former judge of the U.S. federal court system. He has sixteen years appellate experience and currently heads up a consultancy group providing strategic advice on corporate and legal issues.

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2004

Judging Panel