Big names up for €50,000 literature prize

SOME of the biggest names in literature are competing for the inaugural €50,000 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, it emerged yesterday.

Irish writer William Trevor, Chinese Nobel Prize winner Gao Xing Jian, Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News, and Joanne Harris, whose book Chocolat was made into a film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, are just some of the writers competing.

The prize, which is the biggest short story prize in the world, has also attracted entries from writers William Boyd (Armadillo and Any Human Heart), Tim Winton (whose The Riders and Dirt Music were shortlisted for the Booker Prize), and Alice Hoffman, whose book Practical Magic was filmed with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.

Other high-profile writers competing include Alice Munro, who has also been shortlisted for the Booker, and EL Doctorow, author of City of God.

The €50,000 are awarded for the best unpublished, complete book of short stories submitted. A shortlist of six will be announced by the judging panel of five in early July, with the winner to be announced at a gala dinner in Cork on September 25 next.

The prize is sponsored by O’Flynn Construction and will be held every two years. It is organised by Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture, and the Munster Literature Centre.

The prize money compares favourably with that of other major literary prizes: the Booker Prize is worth about €75,000, while the biggest literary prize in the world, the IMPAC, is worth €100,000.

However, both these prizes are for the novel form, making the Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize unprecedented for shorter prose.

With no runner up for the prize, it’s winner takes all next September, said Cork 2005.

Entries were solicited by approaching the biggest publishers worldwide. In all, about 60 submissions have been received from publishers in Dublin, London and New York, it was said.