Young Writers & Dublin Competitions Advance

Ten Years Affirming Young Writers
Entry Forms Now Available
For Upcoming Competition:
$16,000 In Prizes & Dublin Trip

LITCHFIELD, Connecticut . Nov. 6, 2006 -- The IMPAC-Connecticut State University Young Writers Trust invites Connecticut's poets and young writers to enter its 10th annual competition.

Entry forms can be downloaded from the Trust's homepage, www.ctyoungwriters.org

The CSU System mailed entry forms to all public, private and parochial secondary schools this fall. Students ages 13-18 during the school year are eligible.

About 3,500 young writers have competed in the IMPAC-CSU program, which has awarded more than $135,000 since 1998.

Poets and writers in each of Connecticut's eight counties win $1,000 prizes, awarded during ceremonies at the four CSU campuses in Willimantic, New Haven, New Britain and Danbury. The top poet and writer from that set of winners each earn a trip to Dublin with a parent for the presentation of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Dublin Writers Festival and related activities. Statewide poetry and prose champions will be announced during the annual dinner in June 2007 at the Litchfield Inn.

IMPAC, a leading productivity firm, also endows the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, which at 100,000 Euros is the world's largest prize for a single work of fiction.

IMPAC Chairman Jim Irwin and retired CSU Chancellor Bill Cibes expanded the Young Writers Program from Litchfield County to cover the entire state in 2000. Chancellor David Carter, formerly president of Eastern Connecticut State University, has been a champion for the program and has undertaken initiatives to expand participation.

The CSU System serves more than 35,000 students, making it the largest public university system in Connecticut. A total of 166 academic programs are offered throughout the system, and more than 5,000 degrees are awarded annually.

IMPAC-Connecticut State University
Young Writers Trust
231 Beach St. Litchfield, CT 06759
* 800-814-6931 * Fax- 860-567-9119
www.ctyoungwriters.org

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The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
2007 Nominations:



132 Titles,
Including 28 In Translation

169 Libraries From 149 Countries
Participated In Nomination Process

Honouring novels from around the world and in translation is the hallmark of The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. To date, five out of the 11 winners have been novels in translation. Last year's winner was The Master by Ireland's own Colm Tóibín.

The long list of 132 titles for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was announced today in Dublin. The list features no fewer than 28 titles in translation and covers 13 non-English languages, reinforcing its status as the one truly international Award.

The nominations were received from 169 library systems, in 49 countries and from 129 cities. The long list includes works from 43 nationalities, 27 of whom are American, 21 British, 7 Australian, 7 South African, 4 New Zealand and features novels by such names as Joyce Carol Oates, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jonathan Safran Foer, Salman Rushdie, Nicole Krauss, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith, E.L. Doctorow, Margaret Atwood, Bret Easton Ellis, Louise Erdrich, Paul Auster, Amy Tan and Cormac McCarthy.

Translated authors include Haruki Murakami, Isabel Allende, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza and Gabriel García Márquez. The longlist consists of works translated from Albanian, Catalan, Icelandic, Swedish, Arabic, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and French.

There are 4 Irish writers on the longlist this year: John Banville for his novel The Sea, Sebastian Barry for A Long Long Way, Morgan Llywelyn for 1972: A Novel of Ireland's Unfinished Revolution, and Shani Mootoo for He Drown She in the Sea. Authors with Irish connections include Joseph Boydon for Three Day Road and Michael Houellebecq for The Possibility of an Island.

The Short List will be announced in April 2007; the Winner in June 2007.

Previous winners of this prestigious Award have been

The Master by Colm Tóibín (2006),
The Known World by Edward P Jones (2005),
This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun (2004),
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (2003),
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq (2002),
No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod (2001),
Wide Open by Nicola Barker (2000),
Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller (1999),
The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller (1998),
A Heart So White by Javier Marías (1997)
Remembering Babylon by David Malouf (1996).


The members of the international panel of judges for the 2007 Award are:

Hanan al-Shaykh was born in Lebanon and grew up in Beirut. Her most recent novel, Only in London, was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Educated in Cairo, she wrote her first novel there when she was nineteen before returning to Beirut to work as a journalist for Al-Nahar newspaper Al Hasna Magazine. Issues that were largely forbidden territory for Arab writers, particularly women, became the focus of her writing: a strict upbringing; a traditional and closed society; religious taboos; sex and politics. She is frequently invited to lecture at universities in the US and is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on Arab womanhood. She has lived in London since 1984.

Carmen Callil is Australian, born and raised in Melbourne. She came to the UK in 1960. In 1972 she founded Virago and ten years later became Managing Director of Chatto &Windus. In 1994 she was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Sheffield, York, Oxford Brookes and The Open University. In 1996 she chaired the judging panel of the Booker Prize. She is the author (with Colm Toibin) of The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950. She lives in London.

Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952. His first collection of poems, Sheltering Places (Blackstaff) was published in 1978, and The Lundys Letter (1985) was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. Other awards include an Arts Council Burary for Poetry, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship and the Ledig-Rowholt International Writers' Award. He has published numerous poetry collections (Sunday School (1991), Heart of Hearts (1995), The Morning Train (1999) and Lake Geneva (2003)), three collections of essays and edited various anthologies of poetry and criticism. He currently lectures in English at the University of Dublin, Trinity College where he is Director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing and co-director of the graduate creative writing programme. He lives in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin.

Almeida Faria was born in Montemor-o-Novo (south of Portugal) in 1943. A fiction writer, playwright, and essayist, he is a lecturer 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 tetralogy set in the period before, during and after the 25th of April Revolution which put an end to dictatorship. 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 in many languages, including Spanish, Franch, Italian, Dutch,
German, Greek, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian and Bulgarian.

Lilian Faschinger was born in 1950 in Carinthia, Austria. In addition to several plays, she has published a collection of poems, four prose collections and five novels. Her most successful novel to date, Magdalena Sünderin (Magdalena the Sinner, Harper Collins, 1997) has been translated into 16 languages. In addition, Women with Three Aeroplanes, a prose collection, and Vienna Passion, a novel, are available in English translations. Since 1992, she has been a literary translator (from English to German) and freelance writer. Since 1998, she has held several writer-in-residence positions at American colleges and universities, including at Dartmouth College and Washington University in St. Louis. Currently, she is the writer-in-residence at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

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. He currently heads up a judicial consultancy group outside of Washington, D.C.


BACKGROUND

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was the
initiative of Gay Mitchell, then Lord Mayor of Dublin and
Dr. James B Irwin, Chairman of IMPAC in 1992.

The Award is a partnership between IMPAC and Dublin City
Council. The first Award was presented in 1996 to Australian
author David Malouf for Remembering Babylon. The Lord Mayor
of Dublin today continues to act as its patron.

Presented annually, with the objective of promoting excellence in world literature, the award is open to novels written in any language and by authors of any nationality, provided the work has been published in English or English translation in the specified time period as outlined in the rules and conditions for the year.

Since its inception, IMPAC has worked with Dublin City Council to develop the award which has become one of the most prestigious in the world.

IMPAC
IMPAC (Improved Management Productivity and Control) is an international company with its headquarters based in Florida, USA. Founded in 1954 and headed up since 1972 by Dr. James B Irwin, Snr., IMPAC is a global leader in the productivity enhancement field, working on projects for major corporations and institutions in 65 countries around the world. IMPAC's Dublin offices were established in 1988 with the development of its European regional training centre.

Dublin City Council
Dublin City Council is the municipal authority providing local government services for Dublin, the capital city of Ireland. First established in the year 1192, Dublin City Council provides a range of diverse services such as libraries, arts, planning, housing and fire services for the citizens of Dublin - to the highest international standards. Dublin City Public Libraries co-ordinates and steers the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award administrative processes involving more than 150 libraries worldwide.