Welsh Lit Abroad: Owen Sheers & Richard Gwyn

Wales Week in New York City:Wales Week USA is an annual event that takes place around March 1 – St. David’s Day. Wales Week is co-ordinated by the Welsh Assembly Government in New York in partnership with a wide variety of organisations, artists, writers and performers in both Wales and the USA

KGB Readers:

http://www.walesweekusa.com/WalesInNewYork/?sid=9

Richard Gwyn was appointed senior lecturer in Creative and Critical Writing at Cardiff University, a post he held until 2007. Richard’s poetry includes One Night in Icarus Street, Stone dog, flower red, (both 1995), Walking on Bones (2000) and Being in Water (2001). He is also the editor of an anthology of new poetry from Wales titled The Pterodactyl’s Wing: Welsh World Poetry, launched at the Hay Festival in 2003. He has published poetry in translation from Spanish, Catalan, Slovak and Lithuanian, has read his work at many venues internationally, including British Council/Wales Arts International funded events in France, Portugal, Canada and Belgium, including the Blue Metropolis Bleu Festival, Montréal, 2006, and he has collaborated extensively with visual artists in Britain, Spain and France. He has been a regular columnist for Poetry Wales, writes book reviews for The Independent, and has discussed his work on TV and radio in the UK and Spain. His first novel, The Colour of a Dog Running Away (2005), set in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, is published by Parthian in the UK, Doubleday/Anchor in the USA, and has been translated into several languages. His second novel, Deep Hanging Out (2007) is published by Snowbooks.

He reads from his book: Deep Haning Out

---“At once an absurdist riddle, a romantic quest, and a love letter to our anti-hero’s chosen home, Gwyn’s witty and assured first novel is as much about the different ways you can tell a story as it is about the story itself.” The New Yorker -

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Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales. The winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the 1999 Vogue Young Writer’s Award, his first collection of poetry, The Blue Book (Seren, 2000) was short-listed for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward Prize Best 1st Collection 2001. His debut prose work The Dust Diaries (Faber 2004), a non-fiction narrative set in Zimbabwe, was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and won the Welsh Book of the Year 2005. In 2004 he was Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust and was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society’s 20 Next Generation Poets. Owen’s second collection of poetry, Skirrid Hill (Seren, 2005) won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and from 2008 will be an A level set text. Unicorns, almost his one man play based on the life and poetry of the WWII poet Keith Douglas was developed by Old Vic, New Voices. Owen’s first novel, Resistance (UK Faber, 2007/ US Nan Talese/Doubleday 2008) will be translated into eight languages. His recent collaboration with composer Rachel Portman, The Water Diviner’s Tale, an oratorio for children, was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms 2007. Owen is currently a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.He reads from his novel: Resistance

“[A] remarkable first novel. Resistance is at once a brilliant and sometimes frightening thriller, and a mature exploration of human blur and compromise. Its plot presupposes that the Germans defeated the Normandy landings of 1944, and counter-attacked so powerfully that they soon occupied almost the whole of Britain. Sheers treads his tricky path with infinite subtlety. The book’s themes are universal: love of land and country, love and hate of nations, love and suspicion among people, fear and war and common decency.”
-- Jan Morris, The Guardian

Suzanne Dottino

Fiction Curator

Suzanne@KGBBAR.COM