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I had dinner with the talented Mr. Chapman, pictured, on Friday, in London. Chapman is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and creator of screen and audio plays. Among other things, he recently wrote the script for Big Finish's 60-minute podcast / CD, Fear of the Daleks, read by Wendy Padbury - for the Companion Chronicles series. It's great, rousing stuff.

Chapman's latest book, which launched recently at the main Waterstone's in Dublin, is a collection of short stories, titled The Wow Signal. It's out from the UK small press Bluechrome, which is doing some good publishing work lately. They'll be putting out another book from Chapman in 2008. In the meantime, he's set for a busy year - in September 2007, he'll be launching his new collection of poems from Salmon. It's been thirteen years since his last full poetry collection, so this will be a strong grouping of his best work over more than the decade.

I've anthologized "The Wow Signal" story in Future Welcome (DC Books, 2005 - it also had poetry from Picador's Annie Freud, among others) - and often published Chapman, in Nthposition, and elsewhere. I think he's one of the most unusual, fresh and startling Irish writers of his generation. Good luck to him.
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