The 2012 shortlist

As well as winning the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award in 2012, Irish-born Kevin Barry was longlisted for the prize in 2011. His first short story collection, There Are Little Kingdoms (Stinging Fly Press), was published in 2007 and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His first novel, City Of Bohane, was published in 2011 was shortlisted for both the Costa First Novel Award and the Hughes and Hughes Irish Novel of the Year and won the 2013 Impac Award. His second novel, Dark Lies the Island, was published in 2012, and his third novel Beatlebone, won the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize. Kevin’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, the Granta Book of the Irish Short Story, and Best European Fiction 2011 among others and his plays have been produced in Ireland and the US.

Robert Minhinnick is a Welsh poet, essayist, novelist and translator. He has published seven poetry collections and several volumes of essays. He edited the magazine, Poetry Wales from 1997 until 2008. He has also translated poems from contemporary Welsh poets for an anthology, The Adulterer’s Tongue. His first novel, Sea Holly, was published in autumn 2007. Minhinnick won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem in 1999 for ‘Twenty-five Laments for Iraq’, and again in 2003 for ‘The Fox in the National Museum of Wales’. His poem ‘The Castaway’ was also shortlisted in 2004. He has also won an Eric Gregory Award (1980) and a Cholmondeley Award (1998), both awarded by the Society of Authors to British poets.

Linda Oatman High is the author of 15 books for children and teens. In addition to writing for children, she is also a journalist and songwriter who has played in several bands. She lives in Narvon, Pennsylvania.

Tom Lee was born in Essex in 1974 and attended the University of East Anglia, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Goldsmith College. His stories have appeared in Zoetrope All-Story in the United States,The Dublin Review in Ireland and Zembla magazine in the UK, among others, as well as being broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize2 and an international best-seller. Donoghue’s 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award. and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. Room was adapted into a film of the same name; which Donoghue wrote the screenplay for.

Jean Kwok is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Girl in Translation and Mambo in Chinatown. Her work has been published in 18 countries and taught in universities, colleges and high schools across the world. Her honours include the American Library Association Alex Award and the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award.