Ignorance prevents me having an opinion on The Latin American Short Story but after hearing Juan Villoro (Mexico) and Andrés Neuman (Argentina) speak on that topic on May 31st I am keen to start forming one by reading their work and that of other writers they mentioned. What engaging, perceptive and generous speakers they were. Continue reading South American Short Stories – Fiction Fiesta
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.
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.
Continue reading My Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary 2017On New Year’s Day this year the Western Mail published an article by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Wales, Saleem Kidwai. He claimed that a precious achievement in Welsh cultural life is in jeopardy and that a generation have felt ‘rejected by their fellow Welshmen’.
Welsh-Muslim youth who thought themselves like any other Welsh person got a rude awakening post-9/11 — a sort of cultural shock that they were not like any other Welsh person. Overnight, they were the other, the enemy…
As Mr Kidwai set out the traumatic ramifications of this tragic dissociation I felt the force of his appeal that, “As a society… We have to reject any attempts to marginalize Muslims as second-class citizens” but I was perplexed as to how to go about that.
Until I perceived a potential response from the world of journalism itself – from journalism in Wales.
Continue reading Faith and Violence – the journalist’s role
Adjudicator: Grahame Davies: “A mature and wise piece of work that gives us what we want from our writers: in the face of failure and sense of loss, a sense of meaning, understanding and hope.”
Martyrdom on Television – St John Roberts and the Small Screen
Based on the 60′ documentary Merthyr Meirionnydd, presented by Guto Harri, produced by me for S4C.
Article for Welsh Journal of Religious History (Bangor University, Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion in Wales).
I received a bursary from Literature Wales Writer’s Bursary 2013 – Short Story Collection
Literature Wales Bursaries 2013
Snapshot was the winning entry to the totally4women Short Story Competition, August 2013.
“brilliantly chilling”- Carolyn Lazarus, Editor
Editorial Consultant Seeing the Good in Unfamiliar Spiritualities, Circle Books, 2011