Press Releases

October 15, 2000
Brian O'Doherty Novel Selected as Finalist for Booker Prize

Professor Nominated for Prestigious Fiction Award

Contact:
Jane Finalborgo
(631) 287 8313
Fax: (631) 283 4081

Southampton, NY - Brian O'Doherty, University Professor of Fine Arts and Media at Southampton College of Long Island University, has made the shortlist for the 2000 Booker Prize, one of the world's most famous literary prizes.

O'Doherty's "The Deposition of Father McGreevy" (Turtlepoint Press/Books & Co./Helen Marx Books, 1999) is one of six novels on the much-anticipated shortlist, which almost guarantees a worldwide audience and often leads to film consideration, as in the case of previous winners "The English Patient," "The Remains of the Day" and "Schindler's List." The novel chronicles the strange - and reputedly shameful - demise of a remote mountain village in County Kerry, Ireland.

The award is to be announced November 7 in London ceremonies that will be broadcast live in the United Kingdom, where the prize originates. Established in 1968, The Booker Prize (www.bookerprize.co.uk) aims to reward the best novel of the year. The Booker judges are selected from among the UK's leading critics, writers and academics.

Known for bridging multiple art forms, O'Doherty teaches Screenplay as Literature and Arts on Film. He joined the arts and media faculty of Long Island University in 1997 as Southampton College's second University Professor. (The first is essayist and TV commentator Roger Rosenblatt, the catalyst for the University's growing reputation as a center for undergraduate and graduate training in writing.)

O'Doherty is internationally respected not only as a writer of fiction and nonfiction (he was art critic of The New York Times), but as an artist (under the name Patrick Ireland) and media arts professional. For 19 years until 1996, he was director of film, radio and television programs at the National Endowment for the Arts. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Born in Ireland, he now lives in New York City and Southampton.

The paperback edition of O'Doherty's novel will be published in 2001 by Arcadia Books, U.K., distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.