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Next: The Fiction Festival 12-14 March 2010 |
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On this page is the programme for the weekend and, beneath that, the biographies of each visiting writer, with links to their own websites for more information. |
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Each session lasts around 90 minutes, in two halves. During the interval, you can enjoy some refreshments while you browse the bookstall of works by the Festival's poets - all of whom are happy to chat and sign their books. For a reminder of the Fiction Festival, 2009, click here. |
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Their potted biographies appear further down this page.
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The weekend at a glance |
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LOUIS DE BERNIERES ADAM THORPE |
BERYL BAINBRIDGE SCARLETT THOMAS |
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LAVINIA GREENLAW STEPHEN MAY |
Discussion A century after Tolstoy's death The Draw for our unique raffle prize, a book handwritten |
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CLARE MORRALL NIGEL WILLIAMS |
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JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT PAULINE MELVILLE |
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(Click here for a printable version of this "Weekend at a glance" timetable.)
Introducing the writers at the 2010 Fiction Festival:
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Beryl Bainbridge Dame Beryl Bainbridge was born in Formby, Lancashire in 1933. She acted at the Liverpool Playhouse for three years, and appeared in Coronation Street in 1962. She is the author of 17 novels, two travel books and five plays; The Dressmaker (1973 Booker shortlist, Guardian |
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Fiction Prize), The Bottle Factory Outing (1974 Booker shortlisted), Injury Time (1977 Whitbread Prize), An Awfully Big Adventure (1989 Booker shortlist), The Birthday Boys (1992 Whitbread shortlist), Every Man For Himself (1996 Booker shortlist, Whitbread Fiction Prizewinner), Master Georgie (1998 Booker shortlist). Her most recent book, According to Queenie (2001) In 2009, she donated the short story Goodnight Children, Everywhere to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. |
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Louis de Bernières Louis de Bernières was born 1954 and Grew up in the Middle East. Educated at Bradfield and Manchester University. After four dreadful months in the British Army, he went to Columbia to work as a teacher in the morning and a cowboy in the afternoon. His interest in writing |
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came initially from his parents and he has spoken of his wish to write coming from “wanting to be like my father.” Then followed seven novels, short stories, poetry and a play for voices. The novels include The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (1990 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), which was made into a film, and A Partisan’s Daughter (2008 Costa Book award shortlist). His most recent book is of short stories, Notwithstanding: Stories From An English Village (2009). |
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Justin Cartwright Justin Cartwright was born in 1945 in South Africa, where he did much of his growing up. He has worked in film, documentaries and television commercials, and it was for his party election broadcast production that he was appointed the MBE. |
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His novels have been published since the early-1970s, notably In Every Face I Meet (1995, shortlisted for the Booker and Whitbread Novel award and winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ prize); Leading the Cheers (1998, Whitbread Novel Award); White Lightning (2002, shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award); The Promise of Happiness (2005) was chosen as one of Richard & Judy’s Book Club titles and was the winner of the 2005 Hawthornden Prize and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize of South Africa. Justin Cartwright lives in London. |
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Lavinia Greenlaw Lavinia Greenlaw was born in London in 1962, where she has lived for most of her life. Her first novel, Mary George of Allnorthover (2001) won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger. A second novel, An Irresponsible Age and her memoir, The Importance of Music to Girls, |
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were published in 2007. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the UEA. Her awards include an Arts Council of England Writer’s Award, and Switzerland’s Spycher-Leuk Literaturpreis. She has had residencies with, among others, the Science Museum and the Royal Festival Hall. She has written drama and adaptations for the BBC and Channel 4. She is a distinguished poet too, winning the 1997 Forward Best Poem award, and her collection, Minsk (2003), was shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot, Forward and Whitbread poetry awards. |
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Stephen May Norfolk-born writer Stephen May is an award-winning novelist, playwright and TV writer. His first novel, Tag (2008), was one of ten books longlisted for Welsh Book of the Year and went on to win the Media Wales Readers' Prize, an award voted for by the general public. |
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His plays, Back The World and Still Waiting for Everything, toured nationally to good reviews. He also wrote the best-selling how-to guide, Teach Yourself Creative Writing, and his second novel, Life! Death! Prizes!, will be out next year. May is also working on new plays and TV projects both on his own and with the writer Mark Illis (Fiction Festival 2009). He lives in West Yorkshire where he was the Director of the Ted Hughes Arvon centre. 'Wit, energy, bile... May can really write.' (The Guardian) |
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Pauline Melville Pauline Melville was born in Guyana in 1948. She has worked as an actress, appearing in films such as Mona Lisa and British television programmes including the BBC Television comedy series 'The Young Ones'. Her first book, Shape-Shifter (1990), won the |
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Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize. The book consists of a number of short stories dealing with post-colonial life in the Caribbean, notably in her native Guyana, as well as of some stories set in London. Her first novel, The Ventriloquist's Tale (1997), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her comic and frightening, satirical and poetic new novel, Eating Air (2009), follows her collection of stories, The Migration of Ghosts (1998). |
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Clare Morrall Clare Morrall was born in 1952 and grew up in Exeter. She moved to Birmingham to study music and still lives there, working as a piano and violin teacher. Her first published novel was the hugely successful, Astonishing Splashes of Colour (2003), and tells the story of a |
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childless woman who kidnaps a baby. It reflects her interest in synaesthesia - a condition in which emotions are seen as colours. The Daily Mail describes it as "an extremely good first novel: deceptively simple,subtly observed, with a plot that drags you forward like a strong current." It was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Her second novel was Natural Flights of the Human Mind (2006), and this was followed by The Language of Others (2008). |
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Scarlett Thomas Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. She is the author of the novels Bright Young Things, Going Out, PopCo and, most recently, The End of Mr. Y, which has so far been translated into 22 languages, longlisted for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the South |
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African Boeke Prize. In 2001 she was included in the Independent on Sunday's list of the UK's 20 best young writers, and in 2002 she won an Elle Style Award for the novel Going Out. She reviews fiction for the New York Times and the Guardian, and she has written short fiction and articles for various anthologies and publications, including Nature Magazine, the Guardian and the Independent on Sunday. She has also had stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Scarlett has been teaching at the University of Kent since 2004 and is currently working on her eighth novel. |
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Adam Thorpe Adam Thorpe was born in Paris 1956 and grew up in India, Cameroon and England. He now lives in France with his wife and three children. His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was short-listed for the Whitbread Poetry Award. Thorpe's first novel, |
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Ulverton (1992), prompted novelist John Fowles to call it “the most interesting first novel I’ve read these last years.” It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 1992. There followed other novels and a collection of short stories, among others, Still (1995); Nineteen Twenty-One (2001) and No Telling (2003). He is also the author of five plays for BBC Radio, as well as a stage play. His most recent books are a collection of short stories, Is This The Way You Said? (2006) and the novels The Standing Pool (2008) and Hodd (2009). |
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Nigel Williams Nigel Williams was born 1948 in Cheshire. His first novel, My Life Closed Twice (1974) won the Somerset Maugham Award. His 1994 screen adaptation of William Horwood’s Skallarigg won him a BAFTA,and for scriptwriting the 2005 TV drama Elizabeth I, an EMMY nomination |
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He has written many plays for stage and radio, most recently HR (2009), a six-part play for BBC Radio 4. |
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