Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame (30 page)

Duncan McLean
has published fiction
(Bucket of Tongues, Bunker Man
) and non-fiction
(Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
) and written for TV, radio and theatre. He runs an off-licence in the Orkney Islands.

Glyn Maxwell
’s latest book of poetry is
The Nerve
(Picador, 2002). He lives in New York City, and currently teaches at Princeton and Columbia. He is Poetry Editor of the
New Republic
.

Claire Messud
was born in the United States in 1966, and educated at Yale and Cambridge, her first novel.
When the World Was Steady,
was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1996. Her second novel,
The Last Life,
won the Encore Prize. She lives in Washington.

Karl Miller
has been literary editor of the
Spectator
and the
New Statesman,
editor of the
Listener,
and founding editor of the
London Review of Books
. From 1974 to 1992 he was Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. Among his books are
Cockburn’s Millennium, Double,
and two instalments of autobiography,
Rebecca’s Vest
and
Dark Horses
. His life of James Hogg,
Electric Shepherd,
has just been published.

Deborah Moggach
is the author of fourteen novels including
Tulip Fever, Final Demand, Porky
and
Seesaw
. She has also written two books of short stories and several TV dramas. She lives in London.

Rick Moody
is the author, most recently, of a collection of stories,
Demonology,
and a memoir,
The Black Veil
.

Andrew Motion
is the Poet Laureate and Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College. His most recent collection of poems is
Public Property
(2002); in 2003 he published his biographical fantasy
The Invention of Dr Cake
.

Paul Muldoon
is the author, most recently, of
Moy Sand and Gravel,
for which he won the 2003 Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize.

Julie Myerson
was born in Nottingham in 1960 and is the author of
Sleepwalking, The Touch, Me and the Fatman, Laura Bluntly
and, most recently.
Something Might Happen
. She lives in London with the writer and director Jonathan Myerson and their three children.

Edna O’Brien
is the author of twenty-three books including
House of Splendid Isolation, Down by the River
and, most recently,
In The Forest
. She is the recipient of the American National Arts Gold Medal for Literature and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts.

Maggie O’Farrell
was born in Northern Ireland, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. She has worked as a waitress, chambermaid, cycle courier, teacher, arts administrator and journalist. She is the author of two novels.
After You’d Gone
and
My Lover’s Lover;
her third.
The Distance Between Us,
will be published in spring 2004.

Andrew O’Hagan
was born in Glasgow in 1968. His most recent novel is
Personality
. He recently received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Michael Ondaatje
’s works include
Anil’s Ghost, The English Patient, In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid,
and his memoir.
Running in the Family
. His works of poetry include
The Cinnamon Peeler
and
Handwriting
. His most recent book is
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
.

Sean O’Reilly
was born in Deny in Northern Ireland. He has published a book of short stories.
Curfew,
and a novel,
Love and Sleep
. A new novel,
The Swing of Things,
will appear in February 2004.

Chuck Palahnuik
’s best-known novel to date is
Fight Club,
which was made into a major film. His other works include
Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Lullaby
and
Choke
. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Don Paterson
was born in Dundee and works as a musician and editor. He also teaches on the Creative Writing M.Litt. at St Andrews University, his most recent book of poems is
Landing Light
(Faber 2003).

D. B. C. Pierre
is a British author born in Australia and raised in Mexico, the UK and USA. He has since worked in the arts in a dozen countries worldwide, finally settling in London to write his first novel,
Vernon God Little
. He is currently writing in Ireland.

Darryl Pinckney
, a frequent contributor to
The New York Review of Books,
is the author of a novel,
High Cotton
.

Charles Simic
has published sixteen collections of his own poetry, five books of essays, a memoir, and numerous books of translations. He has received many literary awards for his poems and translations, including the MacArthur Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize.
Voice at 3 A.M.,
his selected and new poems, was published by Harcourt this spring.

Matthew Sweeney
’s most recent publications include
Selected Poems
(Cape, 2002), and a children’s novel,
Fox
(Bloomsbury, 2002). A new book of poems,
Sanctuary,
is forthcoming from Cape in September 2004, and he is currently finishing a much-delayed book of stories.

Rupert Thomson
is the author of six novels,
Dreams of Leaving, The Gates of Hell, Air and Fire, The Insult, Soft,
and
The Book of Revelation
. His seventh novel,
Divided Kingdom,
will be published by Bloomsbury in September 2004.

Adam Thorpe
’s latest novel,
No Telling,
was published by Jonathan Cape in 2003, as was his fourth poetry collection,
Nine Lessons from the Dark
. He lives in France with his wife and three children.

Colm Tóibín
was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of the novels
The South,
which won the
Irish Times
First Novel Award 1991,
The Heather Blazing,
winner of the 1992 Encore Award,
The Story of the Night
and
The Blackwater Lightship,
shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize. He has also written a number of non-fiction books, including
Homage to Barcelona
. He lives in Dublin.

William Trevor
was born in County Cork in 1928. He is the author of many novels, most recently
The Story of Lucy Gault,
which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 1977 he was awarded an honorary CBE for his valuable services to literature, and in 2002 he received an honorary knighthood. He is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and now lives in Devon.

Alan Warner
is from Scotland, has lived in Ireland for six years and has written four novels:
Morvern Collar,
which was made into a feature film,
These Demented Lands, The Sopranos
and
The Man Who Walks
(all Vintage). A fifth novel,
The Oscillator
will be published in early 2005 by Jonathan Cape. Alan Warner was one of
Granta’s
Best of Young British Novelists 2003.

Irvine Welsh
is from Edinburgh. His first novel,
Trainspotting,
was published in 1993. Since then he has written a collection of stories,
The Acid House,
a number of film and drama projects, and five further novels, most recently
Porno
(2002) which is being filmed. He currently lives in San Francisco.

Louise Welsh
was born in London in 1965 and read history at Glasgow University, and completed an M.Litt. at Strathclyde and Glasgow University. She spent much of the last ten years as a bookseller in Glasgow. Her first novel,
The Cutting Room,
was nominated for the
Guardian
First Book Award, won the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger, the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award and jointly won the 2002 Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.

Hugo Williams
was born in 1942. He writes the Freelance column in the
Times Literary Supplement
. His
Collected Poems
were published by Faber in 2002. No
Particular Place to Co
is reprinted by Gibson Square Books.

John Hartley Williams
has published eight collections of poetry. His last collection was
Spending Time with Walter
(Cape, 2001). A romance,
Mystery in Spider-ville,
was reissued by Vintage in 2003. His most recent publication is
North Sea Improvisation
– available from the poet at
www.johnhartleywilliams.de

James Wood
was born in 1965. He has received acclaim as one of the most prominent critics of his generation. From 1991 to 1995 he was Chief Literary Critic of the
Guardian,
in London, and since then has been a Senior Editor of the
New Republic
in Washington DC. His reviews and essays appear regularly in that magazine, in the
New Yorker
and the
London Review of Books
. He has published one novel,
The Book Against Cod,
and a collection of essays,
The Broken Estate;
a second collection,
The Irresponsible Self,
will appear in 2004.

My grateful thanks go to the writers who agreed to open all these old wounds and generously take part in this second humiliation, and to those others I invited to contribute but who thought, quite sensibly, that once was more than enough.

I also want to thank my agent, Derek Johns, and my editor, Nicholas Pearson, for their encouragement and assistance.

Robin Robertson is the author of two books of poetry,
A Painted Field
(1997) and
Slow Air
(2002).