Category Archives: Blog

Winner Bridgend Writers’ Circle Open Short Story Competition 2017

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Competition Adjudicator, Laura Foakes said of my story, Acting Abby

This multi-layered story stayed with me long after each reading, which is always a sign of a job well done. The author conveyed his/her understanding of the vagaries of the human condition in a profound but unsentimental way. The wistful first-person narration drew me immediately into the story and the “voice” was strong. I particularly liked the device of using a stage play as a metaphor for the judgements people/audiences make, and the eventual unfolding of the “choice” the narrator made. The author invites us to judge at our peril. This is a very accomplished and thought provoking piece of work.

Credit: Painting by Stephen Morgan

Writers and the Sherman Theatre

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A website is one thing but a person is the real thing. Gethin Evans, Associate Director of the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff gave the Cardiff branch of The Writers’ Guild an up-to-the-minute tour of opportunities for engagement and a sense of the Theatre’s ambitions and future projects in a lively encounter at May’s meeting.

The Sherman’s Artist Development page has not quite caught up with the calendar as most of its references are to 2016 so it was enlightening to get a sense of how the various projects are developing.

Gethin Evans (right) with Guild members

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Writing Your Novel – Ty Newydd On Tour

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The very first Tȳ Newydd on Tour day was held in Cardiff on Saturday 6th May as the writing centre begins to showcase its courses around Wales. A dozen writers got a flavour of ‘A Novel Journey: Writing a Novel from Beginning to End’ which will run at the centre near Criccieth from Monday 12th to Saturday 17th June. A few places are left and the taster day was a great advertisement.

Holly Muller (left) and Kate Hamer

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My Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary 2017

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I am thrilled to have been awarded a Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary for 2017. I admit (career suicide for a writer!) to being at a loss for words to describe how encouraging I find it to have expert opinion, and public money, invested in me. Maybe ‘inspiring’ will do the job. My congratulations to all the bursary recipients.

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Getting a Foot in the Door – Increasing Diversity in Film in Wales

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What’s not to like about a scheme which tackles more than one problem at a time? Ffilm Cymru Wales has launched Foot in the Door / Troed yn y Drws  focused on a large group of people in Wales who are currently hampered by exclusion from the workforce, while the workforce is hampered by losing out on their skills.

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Resourcing Journalists to Report on Faith & Belief

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Many mainstream stories feature religion as an element in the mix. It might be the conjunction of religion and violence; the clash of ethnicity, faith and culture or controversy around the relation of secular ideology and faith-based values. Who takes responsibility for ensuring that journalism students and professional journalists are well-equipped to interpret the powerful impetus of religion at home and abroad – and not only religion but belief in a wider sense?

The answer, in Wales, has been almost no one.

But that is changing, and Wales is at the forefront. In Cardiff on November 8th a day-long workshop was held which it is hoped will have a positive effect on the training of professional journalists and on university curricula.

Copyright @HirstPhotos

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When Religion Makes the News – how well is it reported?

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This post appeared first on the IWA’s clickonwales site 5.11.16

When religion makes the news how well equipped are journalists to understand it? The notion of a dedicated religious correspondent fell out of favour as Britain became more secular but religion as a force in current affairs has never been so prominent. There is a religion-and belief-sized gap in the training that would-be journalists and practising professionals are receiving. NUJ Training Wales, the training arm of the National Union of Journalists has taken a bold initiative towards filling it.

A one-day workshop will be held in Cardiff on November 8th

http://nujtrainingwales.org/event/religion-makes-news/

When Religion Makes the News will be chaired by the eminent broadcaster, Roger Bolton (Panorama, This Week, Feedback) and addressed by Aaqil Ahmed, BBC Head of Religion and Ethics. Continue reading When Religion Makes the News – how well is it reported? →

Faith in the News

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Faith in the News an episode of BBC Radio Wales’s All Things Considered examined the ability of journalists to grasp and interpret religious motivation in world affairs. The programme, led by Sarah Rowland Jones, was prompted by the workshop I am organizing for NUJ Training Wales.

http://nujtrainingwales.org/event/religion-makes-news/?instance_id=1383

The workshop is a response to the lack of training for journalists in this area.

With me on the programme was Dr Michael Munnik of Cardiff University’s Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK. He has just  launched the first undergraduate module in any Welsh university to tackle the subject of religious literacy and the media. This is delivered via the School of History, Archaeology and Religion. To date, no School of Journalism in any of Wales’s 8 universities originates any teaching on this topic.

Abdul-Azim Ahmed of the Muslim Council of Wales and Ruth Gledhill, former Times Religious Affairs correspondent also debated the place of religion among the many factors that influence social and political events.

#ReportingBelief16 is the hashtag for the workshop because not only religion but other kinds of beliefs and ideologies have an influence on the choices people make.

 

 

Remembering Srebrenica in Cardiff

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‘We were given to the Serbs.’ In July 1995 the Bosnian town of Srebrenica fell to the forces of General Ratko Mladić  and his Serbian paramilitaries. At least 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred. Deportations and rape followed.

In Cardiff’s Temple of Peace the 21st anniversary of the greatest atrocity in Europe since the Second World War was remembered through the testimony of three Bosnian Muslim survivors and the daughter of Bosnian refugees who was raised in Scotland.

Hajrudin Mesic (left) & Resad Trbonja at Remembering Srebrenica, Cardiff
Hajrudin Mešić (left) & Resad Trbonja at Remembering Srebrenica, Cardiff

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