31 Stories in May at Hay!: Day 14 - ‘Mrs Kuroda on Penyfan’ by Nigel Jarrett
31 Stories in May at Hay!: Day 13 - ‘The Gift of Tongues’ by Arthur Machen
31 Stories in May at Hay!: Day 12 ‘Natives’ by Ron Berry
Every day throughout May, you will be able to visit the Library of Wales website to download your free story, drawn from Story, vols I and II - a collection boasting the finest Welsh short fiction ever written and featuring some of the most talented literary names from both past and present, including the legendary Dylan Thomas and the award-winning Rachel Trezise, as well as read all about the chosen author.
Day 12: 'Natives' by Ron Berry
(Taken from Pieces of Eight, 1982)
Ron Berry was an author of novel and short stories born in 1920 in Blaenycwm in the Rhondda Valley where he remained for most of his life. The son of a coal miner, he worked in mining from the age of fourteen until the outbreak of World War II saw him serving in both the British Army and the Merchant Navy. He undertook a sporting career, including amateur boxing and playing association football for Swansea Town, scoring a vital goal in a cup match, but he had to end it in 1943 due to a knee injury. He took up various jobs, working around Wales and in London as a carpenter and writing some essays and poetry for which he was unable to find a publisher though. In 1948 he married Rene Jones, with whom he had five children, and in the 1950s he studied at the adult education college Coleg Harlech, but still having further spells in mining and as a carpenter. After his failed attempt to enter teacher training college, he took on a job as the assistant manager of the local swimming baths in Treherbert. His first published novel, Hunter and Hunted, that he began writing in this occasion, appeared in 1960 and was followed by Travelling Loaded (1963), The Full-Time Amateur (1966), Flame and Slag (1968) and So Long, Hector Bebb (1970). As his writing was never entirely successful enough to sustain him, in 1970s Berry had to rely on friends and on the support of Sir Wyn Roberts in obtaining for him a Civil list pension. He also wrote shorter fiction for BBC television and radio, and a personal account of watching Peregrine Falcons in 1987 entitled Peregrine Watching. He was able to write an authentic picture of working class life drawn from his own experiences, and his fictional output depicted a hard but positive view of the industrial Welsh valleys, entirely bereft of sentimentality and the hype which he scornfully left to others. His last novel This Bygone, was published in 1996. He died in Pontypridd in 1997 after years suffering arthritis and poor health, and his Collected Stories and autobiography, History is What You Live, appeared posthumously in 1998.
You can download the story in PDF format here. (If download does not start, then right click the link and select 'Save link as'.)
Selected bibliography
Flame and Slag (Library of Wales, 2012)
So Long, Hector Bebb (Parthian, 2005)
Contributed to
Story I (anthology) (Library of Wales, 2014)
Story II (anthology) (Library of Wales, 2014)
31 Stories in May at Hay!: Day 11 ‘Blood etc.’ by Gee Williams
Every day throughout May, you will be able to visit the Library of Wales website to download your free story, drawn from Story, vols I and II - a collection boasting the finest Welsh short fiction ever written and featuring some of the most talented literary names from both past and present, including the legendary Dylan Thomas and the award-winning Rachel Trezise, as well as read all about the chosen author.
Day 11: 'Blood etc.' by Gee Williams
(Taken from Blood, etc., 2008)
Gee Williams is a dramatist, short story writer, novelist, poet, scriptwriter, editor and radio broadcaster. She was born in Saltney, Flintshire, and studied English and Education at Culham College, Oxford. Williams was a former lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature, and now is a full-time writer, writing numerous magazine and anthology pieces, as well as two full-length plays and prose scripts for Radio Wales and Radio 4. Her first collection Magic and Other Deceptions was published in 2000. She was shortlisted for the Richard Imerson Award and Commission for Racial Equality Race in the Media awards, the Rhys Davies Award (1996) and The Book Pl@ce Contemporary Short Story Award (2003). Williams’ first novel Savage (2007) was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2008, and in the same year was voted winner of the Pure Gold Fiction Award by Welsh readers. Her short-story collection Blood, etc. was published in 2008 and was on the 2009 Wales Book of the Year Short List .
You can download the story in PDF format here. (If download does not start, then right click the link and select 'Save link as'.)
Selected bibliography
Blood, etc. (Parthian, 2008)
Contributed to
Story II (anthology) (Library of Wales, 2014)
Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe (Parthian, 1999)
Tilting at Windmills (Parthian, 1998)
31 Stories in May at Hay!: Day 10 ‘Bunting’ by Jon Gower
Every day throughout May, you will be able to visit the Library of Wales website to download your free story, drawn from Story, vols I and II - a collection boasting the finest Welsh short fiction ever written and featuring some of the most talented literary names from both past and present, including the legendary Dylan Thomas and the award-winning Rachel Trezise, as well as read all about the chosen author.
Day 10: 'Bunting' by Jon Gower
(Taken from Too Cold for Snow, 2012)
Jon Gower was born in 1959 in Llanelli, and read English at Girton College, Cambridge University. He is a writer, performer and broadcaster, as well as a producer with Boomerang, one of Wales’ most dynamically creative TV and radio companies. As a former BBC Wales’ Arts and Media correspondent, Jon has been making documentary programmes for television and radio for some thirty years, the most recent covering subjects such as the secret life as a poet of Hollywood actor Robert Mitchum (based on the book Oh Dad! by Lloyd Robson) and the Summer of Love in San Francisco. He also presented First Hand, BBC Radio Wales’ arts programme, and worked, variously, as public affairs officer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and as a current affairs journalist for HTV. Winner of the John Morgan travel writing prize, he has eleven books to his name, in both Welsh and English, about travel and local history. He has written books on non-fictional subjects as diverse as a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay in An Island Called Smith (2001) and a West Wales tour in psycho-geography in Real Llanelli (2000), as well as the fiction of Dala’r Llanw (2009), Uncharted (2010), a novel described by Jan Morris as ‘unflagging and unfailingly inventive’, and Big Fish (2000). Too Cold For Snow, a collection of short stories, was released in 2012, and so the publication about the Welsh coastline, Wales at Water’s Edge – A Coastal Journey, where his text complements beautiful photography by Jeremy Moore. His latest book, The Story of Wales, will accompany a landmark BBC series. He has recently published a book about his home town and in 2011 was an English language judge for the Wales Book of the Year. In 2009 Jon was awarded a major Creative Wales award to explore the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, and in 2012 he won the Welsh Language Wales Book of the Year Prize for his novel Y Storïwr. Jon is currently Hay Festival International Fellow as well as Fellow of The Welsh Academy, and is working on a critical biography of the American actor Steve Buscemi. In what little spare time he has Jon develops and performs theatre pieces with actor Gerald Tyler and trumpeter Tomos Williams. Jon lives in Cardiff with his wife Sarah and two book-loving daughters, Elena and Onwy.
You can download the story in PDF format here. (If download does not start, then right click the link and select 'Save link as'.)
Selected bibliography
Too Cold for Snow (Parthian, 2012)
Contributed to
Story II (anthology) (Library of Wales, 2014)
Three Parthian authors nominated for the Wales Book of the Year Award
Wales Book of the Year Award Nominee #3: Jemma L. King
We are delighted to announce that three of Parthian's recently published authors - Tyler Keevil, Jemma L. King and Meic Stephens - have been nominated for the prestigious Wales Books of the Year award, and will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of previous Parthian winners John Harrison (in 2013 and 2011) and Deborah Kay Davies (in 2009).
Jemma and Tyler will be attending and reading at the Parthian Rarebit event at Hay Festival on Monday 26 May 2014, 8.30pm as part of Parthian's 21st birthday bash. Be sure to purchase tickets here so that you can come down and congratulate them in person!
Nominee #3: Jemma L. King (for The Shape of a Forest [Parthian, 2013]; in the Roland Mathias Poetry Award category)
Poem: 'Amelia Earhart', 'Water Music', 'Nuclear ', 'Winter for the Robin', 'The Beginning' and 'Japan' (Taken from The Shape of a Forest, 2013)
You can download the story in PDF format here. (If download does not start, then right click the link and select 'Save link as'.)
Selected bibliography
The Shape of a Forest (Parthian, 2013)
The Undressed (Parthian, 2014)
Contributed to
Cheval 6 (Parthian, 2013)
Wales Book of the Year Award Nominee #2: Meic Stephens
We are delighted to announce that three of Parthian's recently published authors - Tyler Keevil, Jemma L. King and Meic Stephens - have been nominated for the prestigious Wales Books of the Year award, and will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of previous Parthian winners John Harrison (in 2013 and 2011) and Deborah Kay Davies (in 2009).
Jemma and Tyler will be attending and reading at the Parthian Rarebit event at Hay Festival on Monday 26 May 2014, 8.30pm as part of Parthian's 21st birthday bash. Be sure to purchase tickets here so that you can come down and congratulate them in person!
Nominee #2: Meic Stephens (for Rhys Davies: A Writer's Life [Parthian, 2013]; in the Creative Non-Fiction catagory)
Story: 'The Elusive Hare' (Taken from Rhys Davies: A Writer's Life, 2013)
You can download the story in PDF format here. (If download does not start, then right click the link and select 'Save link as'.)
Selected bibliography
Poetry 1900-2000 (Library of Wales, 2007)
Rhys Davies: A Writer's Life (Parthian, 2013)
Contributed to
A White Afternoon: New Welsh Short Fiction (translator) (Parthian, 1998)
Wales Book of the Year Award Nominee #1: Tyler Keevil
We are delighted to announce that three of Parthian's recently published authors - Tyler Keevil, Jemma L. King and Meic Stephens - have been nominated for the prestigious Wales Books of the Year award, and will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of previous Parthian winners John Harrison (in 2013 and 2011) and Deborah Kay Davies (in 2009).
Jemma and Tyler will be attending and reading at the Parthian Rarebit event at Hay Festival on Monday 26 May 2014, 8.30pm as part of Parthian's 21st birthday bash. Be sure to purchase tickets here so that you can come down and congratulate them in person!
Nominee #1: Tyler Keevil (for The Drive [Myriad Editions, 2013]; in the Fiction catagory)
Story: 'Mangleface' (Taken from Burrard Inlet, 2014)
You can download the story in PDF format here. (If download does not start, then right click the link and select 'Save link as'.)
Selected bibliography
Fireball (Parthian, 2010)
Burrard Inlet (Parthian, 2014)
Contributed to
Rarebit (anthology) (Parthian, 2014)
31 Stories in May at Hay!: Day 9 ‘Bowels Jones’ by Alun Richards
Every day throughout May, you will be able to visit the Library of Wales website to download your free story, drawn from Story, vols I and II - a collection boasting the finest Welsh short fiction ever written and featuring some of the most talented literary names from both past and present, including the legendary Dylan Thomas and the award-winning Rachel Trezise, as well as read all about the chosen author.
Day 9: 'Bowels Jones' by Alun Richards
(Taken from The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil and Other Stories, 1976)
Alun Morgan Richards was born in 1929 in Pontypridd. After spells as a schoolteacher and probation officer, he joined as an instructor the Royal Navy, which sparked a fascination with the sea that inspired much of his writing.
In 1955 he returned to Wales from London, but was admitted to the sanatorium at Talgarth, where he had stayed for 2 years, after becoming ill with tuberculosis. Once released, he married Helen Howden, a probation officer, with whom he had four children. Then, from the 1960s he was, and successfully so, a full-time writer, as well as an English teacher for 10 years.
He lived near the Mumbles, Swansea, close to the sea which, coupled with the hills of the South Wales Valleys, was the landscape of his fiction. He wrote plays for stage and radio, original screenplays and adaptations for television, including BBC’s Onedin Line, as well as novels, short stories, a biography and a memoir. From 1962 to 1979 he wrote his six novels and two scintillating collections of short stories, Dai Country (1973) and The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil (1976). As editor, he produced bestselling editions of Welsh short stories and tales of the sea for Penguin. In 1980 he wrote to mark the centenary of the Welsh Rugby Union, as he was a great connoisseur of that sport. His sensitive biography of his close friend, Carwyn James, appeared in 1984 and his own entrancing memoir Days of Absencein in 1986. Alun Richards died in Singleton Hospital, Swansea, after an heart attack in 2004.
You can download the story in PDF format here. (If download does not start, then right click the link and select 'Save link as'.)
Selected bibliography
Dai Country (Library of Wales, 2011)
Home to an Empty House (Library of Wales, 2006)
Contributed to
Story I (anthology) (Library of Wales, 2014)
Story II (anthology) (Library of Wales, 2014)
The First Fifteen: A Selection of the Best Rugby Writing (Parthian, 2011)