Orange Prize for Fiction Stirs Controversy

Posted on April 18, 2005

The Telegraph (UK) reports on the six women authors who have been short-listed for the £30,000 Orange Prize for Fiction, which is for women writers only. Apparently, some of the six finalists have quite a colorful past. The Telegraph says shortlisted authors are: Joolz Denby for Billie Morgan, Jane Gardam for Old Filth, Sheri Holman for The Mammoth Cheese, Marina Lewycka for A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Maile Meloy for Liars and Saints, Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin. (Lionel Shriver is a woman: she changed her name to a boy's when she was 15). Jane Gardam is in her mid-70's and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978, and has won the Whitbread Best Novel Award. Most of the other authors are unknowns. But name of Joolz Denby certainly raised a few eyebrows.

Far and away the most colourful is [Joolz] Denby, 50 this year, who went to a private school in Harrogate. She soon rebelled and at the age of 19 married a member of Satan's Slaves bike gang. The marriage lasted four years but left a legacy.

Some 70 per cent of her body is covered with tattoos and she has 25 body piercings in her ears, nose and chin. A punk poet, she has toured with the band New Model Army for the past 25 years.

Billie Morgan, her third book, is published by the small firm Serpent's Tail after she was dropped by HarperCollins - and it is not for the faint-hearted. Replete with details about drugs, a teenage gang rape and an episode when a severed head is put on display at a bikers' party, it is the confessional but fictional story of a "biker chick" involved in a murder.