Parthian is a Welsh publisher dedicated to the publication of the new generation of writers. Our project Nu, as the name suggests, is an innovative publication with an aim to discover, foster and showcase new writing from Wales and beyond.

This is what editor Tomos Owen said of the first of these annual publications just prior to its launch at the Hay Festival in May 2009

Make it Nu

In the early decades of the twentieth century the poet Ezra Pound gave his fellow modernists – artists and writers alike – a famous call to arms, imploring them to ‘make it new’. Today, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Welsh publisher Parthian is doing the same in the form of its most recent project, Nu: Fiction and Stuff. Nu is, as its title suggests, an anthology of new writing seeking to provide a platform upon which young and aspiring writers from Wales and beyond are able to share their work.

The first edition, Nu: fiction and stuff,  was be published in May 2009, and contained examples of fiction and short stories, poetry and photo-journalism by writers under thirty. The content moved from the rural to the urban; from gothic to magical realism; from the retelling of medieval myth to weird encounters with past and future selves.

The second edition, Nu2: Memorable Firsts, will be published in June this year, and the entrants vary from first-time writers to old hands; from page and stage poets to prose-writers, from German, Portuguese, Welsh and Kazakh backgrounds.

What unites this motley crew of writers, poets and thinkers is a vitality and enthusiasm to create and share their work. We hope that this new edition of Nu2 will inspire yet more would-be writers to take the leap and put pen to paper after the success of the first!

Find out about the contributors to the second edition of the annual publication born out of the Nu project.