LITERARY MATTERS

n Literary types are clogging up the highways and byways en route to a week in which books are bound to make headlines.

Tomorrow the coolly competent Sheena McDonald is Chair of Judges at the Orange Prize for Fiction at the People's Palace, Royal Festival Hall, London, when a short-list of top-notch women writers will wait with stiffening spines and fluttering pages to see which of them has won the phone company's prestigious prize for fiction awarded every year for writing in English.

It's not just the prestige and the book sales - there's also a #30,000 cheque and a limited-edition bronze to put on the mantelpiece.

The short-list includes Swiss-born Kirsteen Bakis for Lives of The Monster Dogs, set in New York in 2008, Los Angeles-born Ann Patchett for The Magician's Assistant, and Dublin's Deirdre Purcell, writing about the effect of rape on a relationship in Love Like Hate Adore.

You will not, however, find Nadine Gardiner's The House of Gune among the entries. She withdrew it because ''she didn't want to be judged in terms of gender''. The same decision was reached in previous years by Anita Brookner and Ruth Rendell and you've got to admit they have a point. A good book is a good book and positive discrimination can sometimes seem plain patronising.

Still, that #30,000 cheque could compensate for hurt sensibilities.

Two of the highest-tipped entrants are scheduled to talk about their books at London's Bloomsbury Theatre this evening - Pauline Melville, author of The Ventriloquist's Tale, and Carol Shields, who wrote Larry's Party. Also on the London talk circuit tonight are P D James, nine of whose crisply forensic novels have been televised, and John Mortimer, creator of Rumple of the Bailey, talking about murder, justice, and retribution at the Royal National Theatre and (purely by coincidence) pushing their latest books.

Books books, books . . . over at Dublin Castle the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 1998 is being presented, with an even bigger prize - #110,000 (the richest literary prize for a single piece of fiction in the world). And short-listed authors include Graham Swift, Margaret Atwood, and Caribbean writer Earl Lovelace.

You want more bibliographical stuff? Well, there is, of course the Sunday Times Hay Festival down on the River Wye, an event which manages, from Friday to the end of the month, to attract such diverse names as Armistad Maupin, the scribe of San Francisco, Toni Morrison, Stephen Hawkings, and . . . wait for it . . . Debbie Harry.

Inevitably, Douglas Hurd will be there, plugging his latest novel, and as well as authors strutting their stuff, there will also be, according to an enthusiastic press officer called Abby, local walks, classical music,debates, and Imogen Stubbs and Joss Ackland talking about acting.

One last little literary note. This week celebrates Betjamin Week in Cornwall. The poet's life and work will be honoured and there should be a party at his graveside in St Edodoc churchyard tomorrow.

Splendid stuff, with, I hope, the six o'clock news and a lime juice and gin.