Irish novelist John Banville is the author of the 2005 Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, the tale of an elderly art historian who loses his wife to cancer and feels compelled to revisit the seaside villa where he spent childhood holidays. The literary editor of the Irish Times from 1988 to 1999, Banville’s previous work includes the novels Dr Copernicus,The Book of Evidence, and Eclipse.

Born in Dublin in 1955, Sebastian Barry has explored his country’s heritage and examined the impact of British rule in Ireland in such works as Boss Grady’s Boys and the award-winning The Steward of Christendom. A poet, playwright, novelist, and short story writer, Barry is the author of the acclaimed novels The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and Annie Dunne, and his most recent play, Whistling Psyche, premiered at the Almeida in London in 2004. His new novel, A Long, Long Way, a story of Ireland during World War I, was short-listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize.

One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2004 and short-listed for the 2004 Booker Prize, Colm Toibin’sThe Master re-imagines the life of the celebrated novelist Henry James. Author Shirley Hazzard writes, Toibin’s new novel “engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life...composed by a writer who is himself a master of his art.”