Author of the Month
Each month on the Libraries Wales website, we will focus on an inspiring author based in or writing about Wales. You’ll have an introduction to their latest book, a short biography of the author, what inspires them to write, and any advice they have for young writers, all available in exclusive interviews which you can read here.
Since introducing this feature, some of our focused authors to date have been Jon Blake, Dai Smith, Rob Gittins, and our very own Children’s Laureate Wales, Eloise Williams.
Are you a teacher or librarian? A special flyer will be available to download and print every month based on each of our showcased authors that can be used for educational purposes.
We will focus on two authors every month writing in English and Welsh. Link to the Welsh-language Author of the Month available here.
July 3, 2023
Kathy Biggs
Kathy Biggs is originally from Yorkshire and settled in Mid Wales in the 1980s. After studying a number of Creative Writing courses linked to Aberystwyth University, she discovered a talent for writing. Her first novel. The Luck was published in October 2022, with her second novel, Scrap, published end of June this year. Scrap is a […]
Read moreJune 1, 2023
Horatio Clare
Horatio Clare is an English author known for travel, memoir, nature and children’s books. He worked at the BBC as a producer on Front Row (BBC Radio 4), Night Waves and The Verb. Clare’s first book, Running for the Hills, an acclaimed account of a Welsh childhood, won a Somerset Maugham Award, was longlisted for the […]
Read moreApril 28, 2023
Dave Lewis
Dave Lewis is a writer, poet and photographer from the ex-mining village of Cilfynydd in Rhondda Cynon Taf. He read zoology at Cardiff University and studied Software Engineering at Glamorgan University. He has taught science, IT and photography in schools and colleges in south Wales. He has always lived in Wales apart from a year, […]
Read moreApril 3, 2023
Judith Barrow
Although Judith was born and brought up in a small village on the edge of the Pennine moors in Yorkshire, for the last forty years she has lived with her husband and family near the coast in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. She has an MA in Creative Writing, B.A. (Hons.) in Literature, and a Diploma […]
Read moreMarch 9, 2023
Beatrice Wallbank
Beatrice grew up in mid Wales. When not wandering about in wild places thinking about stories she works backstage in theatre, storytelling in a different form. She also really likes “old stuff” and is a historian of things relating to the sea in early medieval Wales. The Sleeping Stones is her first book. The […]
Read moreFebruary 1, 2023
Sian Collins
Born in St David’s, Pembrokeshire, and raised in Carmarthenshire, Siân has lived much of her life outside Wales. An Edinburgh University graduate, she has taught Anglo Saxon and Medieval Literature to university students in South Africa, worked as an assistant editor on the medical journal The Lancet, and ran English and Drama departments in […]
Read moreJanuary 4, 2023
Eluned Gramich
Eluned Gramich is a writer, translator and editor, orginally from west Wales. She has a BA in English Literature from Oxford University, an MA in Creative Writing (Prose) from the University of East Anglia, and a PhD in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth and Cardiff Universities, funded by the SWW DTP. She has lived in England, […]
Read moreDecember 1, 2022
Angela Graham
Angela Graham is from Belfast. A fluent Welsh-speaker, she is an award-winning TV producer and film maker. Her debut collection of short stories A City Burning (Seren Books) appeared in 2020 and was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2021. Her poetry is widely published. She won first prize for poetry in […]
Read moreNovember 1, 2022
Mari Ellis Dunning
Mari Ellis Dunning’s poems and short fiction can be found in recent and upcoming editions of The Ghastling, Litro Magazine and Poetry Wales, amongst others. She has also been the winner of The Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award, and placed second in both the Lucent Dreaming Short Story Competition and the Sylvia Plath Poetry […]
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