Author of the Month RSS

As his debut novel, Bad Ideas\Chemicals, was released last month, Lloyd Markham is our Author of the Month for August.   About Lloyd: Lloyd was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, before he and his family moved and settled in Bridgend, South Wales. He describes his teenage years as ‘miserable and strange and consisting of bad nights out’ before he embarked upon a degree in Creative Writing at the then University of Glamorgan, which is now the University of South Wales. Lloyd also earned an MPhil from the University of South Wales. He enjoys noise music, Japanese animation and the documentaries...

Uršuľa Kovalyk is a poet, fiction writer, playwright and social worker. She was born in 1969 in Košice, eastern Slovakia and currently lives in the capital, Bratislava. She has worked for a women's non-profit focusing on women's rights and currently works for the NGO Against the Current, which helps homeless people. Kovalyk is the director of the Theatre With No Home, which features homeless and disabled actors. She has published plays, short stories and novels, and was shortlisted for the Anasoft Litera 2014 for Krasojazdkyña (The Equestrienne). I lived several lives in the brief instant before my feet touched the ground. The music stopped....

Ece Temelkuran was born in 1973 and is a Turkish writer, journalist and political commentator. She has written various columns which have been published in leading international newspapers such as the Guardian and Le Monde. Her work has not gone unnoticed: in 2001 she received the Pen for Peace Award and in 2009 she received the Free Thought and Democracy Award. Her work often tackles subjects like the Kurdish and Armenian questions, the women's movement, and political prisoners, which are all highly controversial topics in her homeland of Turkey. Her criticism of the Turkish government eventually led to her dismissal...

Alys Conran is based in North Wales, where she writes fiction and poetry. Her debut novel Pigeon is one of 6 books by writers aged 39 and under shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2017. 'An exquisite novel by a great new writer' – M.J Hyland   Last year a Welsh language adaptation of Pigeon (Pijin by Sian Northey) was published at the same time as the English original. This year Pigeon will be released in India by Bee Books. Alys Conran's short fiction has been placed in the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at Manchester, graduating with distinction,...

Dai Smith, born in Rhondda in 1945, is a Welsh writer and historian who was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to culture and the arts in Wales. He has been a professor in History at Lancaster University, Cardiff University and Swansea University from 1969 until 1993, being awarded with a personal chair by the University of Wales in 1986. 

In 1993 he took up a position as editor for the BBC, working on Radio Wales and later on in 1994 became the Head of Broadcast (English Language) at BBC Wales, for which he commissioned various award-winning programmes, especially in the Arts and Drama until 2000. He became the Raymond Williams chairman in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University in 2005 and in 2007 he was appointed Arts Council of Wales chairman.

Series Editor of the Library of Wales for classic works written in English from or about Wales, Smith is also chair of the judging panel for the International Dylan Thomas Prize.