Ghettoisation continues in the rarefied world of literary awards. We all know about the Orange fiction prize, from which men are excluded as a matter of course; now there's the Irish Queer Writers Award, from which heterosexuals, be they men or women, are barred.
Actually, the press release announcing the winners is a bit vague on the matter. Do you have to be gay to be eligible or can you be bisexual? Can you be a heterosexual writing about gay life? Indeed, can you be a gay who doesn't like being called queer? I simply don't know.
Anyway, this year's winners (announced at the launch of Gay Community News's hundredth issue in the Irish Film Centre a few nights back) are Micheal O Conghaile for his Irish-language short story "An Mercyfucker", and Padraig Rooney for his poem "Proust's Day". Both are published in GCN's centenary issue and for those unfamiliar with our native tongue, Gabriel Rosenstock has provided a translation of the former, though the title hardly needs translating - indeed, Mr O Conghaile obviously found it impossible to render the notion into the ancient language of our saints and scholars.
The judging panel comprised Emma Donoghue, Mary Dorcey, Frank McGuinness and Cathal O Searchaigh, and the £400 prizes came courtesy of sponsors Antaeus Press, the Women's Education, Research and Resource Centre at UCD and an anonymous donor.
A thought: given the discriminatory basis of this award and of the Orange prize, perhaps it's time to launch a literary competition open only to red-blooded male heterosexuals. The criteria for entry are as valid as those mentioned above, but I've a sneaking feeling it mightn't go down too well. Anyway feminists and gays would probably argue that such boyos already dominate the main literary awards.
Marie Heaney is having an especially busy time these days. She's just finished her M.Phil thesis for UCD, is writing a children's version of her 1994 book Over Nine Waves for Faber, and is about to start work as a commissioning editor for Dublin publishers Town House.
It was at a Town House reception in the RDS on Thursday night that I met her, and the large gathering heard her read Auden's marvellous poem, Musee des Beaux Arts. The occasion was the publication of Lifelines 3, which, like its predecessors, is an anthology of favourite poems chosen by the famous and notso-famous. As one of the latter, I was chuffed to find myself between the same covers as Arthur Miller, Gary Lineker, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard (the last-named, like myself and colleague Eileen Battersby, opted for a Larkin poem). The whole Lifelines enterprise is the brainchild of fifth-year students in Wesley College, and the royalties from all three books go to Concern. Gay Byrne performed the launching honours in the RDS with his customary panache.
I see that a new Gerry Adams book is on the way - and from a new imprint, too.
His last book, Before the Dawn, which was published by Brandon in Dingle, didn't do as well as expected, with sales adversely affected by the breakdown of the first IRA ceasefire. Since then, Steve MacDonogh has parted company with problem-hit Brandon , but has taken Adams with him, and it's MacDonogh's own company, Mount Eagle (also Dingle-based), which next month will publish the new book as its inaugural publication.
Entitled An Irish Voice: The Quest for Peace, it's a collection of pieces Adams has been writing for the New York weekly paper the Irish Voice and, in the words of the advance publicity, it promises not just a revealing chronicle of the peace process but also an insight into his private life "and some surprisingly light and humorous moments". Well, I suppose we could all do with a laugh.
Another Brandon author, Phil O'Keeffe, hasn't been so lucky. In June it published Standing at the Crossroads, her sequel to Down Cobbled Streets, and its evocation of growing up in mid-century Dublin was just as vivid as its predecessor. But Brandon's trading difficulties began immediately after the book was released, and Phil feels that it didn't get the publicity that otherwise might have come its way.
However, it's still in the shops, and she's also cheered by a trip she has just made to Bonn, where she read from both books.
Fans of BBC2's This Life, distraught at the possibility that it mightn't return to the small screen, should take heart. For one thing, the Beeb is actively planning a third series about those loveable, lovelorn, sex-mad, angst-ridden, pill-popping, drug-crazed London yuppies, otherwise known as Miles, Anna, Egg, Milly and Ferdie.
For another, Penguin has paid what it terms a "substantial five-figure" sum for This Life: The Novel, to be written by newlad novelist William Sutcliffe. There will also be a Penguin picture-book guide to the series. What more could you want?
Among the novels shortlisted for one of France's most prestigious literary awards are two by Irish writers - Colm Toibin's The Story of the Night and Robert McLiam Wilson's Eureka Street (also shortlisted for this year's Irish Times Fiction Award).
As its title suggests, the Medicis Etranger award is for a foreign book published in France, and this year's shortlist (which also includes novels by Cormac McCarthy and Paul Theroux) was drawn from more than two hundred entries. The overall winner will be announced shortly.