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For our daily #authorinsight, we were joined by Brennig Davies who discussed his short story, ‘Dogs in a Storm’, shortlisted for the 2021 Rhys Davies Short Story Award!  Brennig is a writer from the Vale of Glamorgan, who recently completed a BA in English at Mansfield College. In the past his work has been published in magazines and anthologies, and he has previously won the inaugural BBC Young Writers Award (2015), as well as the Crown at the Urdd National Eisteddfod (2019). In Brennig’s shortlisted entry, Dogs in a Storm, a mother is desperately hoping for change, verging on transformation as she realises...

Interview with Patrick Jones, Author of Fuse/Fracture (Poems 2001-2021) Selected Poems: 20th Anniversary Edition with a Foreword by James Dean Bradfield.   Within this collection of skilfully stitched poetry ‒ spanning a twenty-year career ‒ you hear woven through it striking elements of technique, strategy, and movement. There is pain, a sense of grief and belonging that each creative strives for, a need to be understood, to have an audience to connect and to engage with our work. They stand as witness to their surroundings. These poems hold as a platform to rebel, to protest, and to illuminate as the forms...

Up next for our Rhys Davies Short Story Award #authorinsights, we present an interview with author Jupiter Jones, who was shortlisted for her short story, ‘Bird’. Jupiter grew up on the north-west coasts of Cumberland and Lancashire, the former a wild and secretive landscape, whilst the latter trashy and jaded. She loved both of these locations; they inspire and haunt her writing. Having completed a PhD in Spectatorial Embarrassment at Goldsmiths, Jupiter now lives in Wales writing short stories and flash fiction which has led her to win the Colm Tóibín International Prize. In Jupiter’s shortlisted entry, ‘Bird’, two strangers meet within the...

Continuing with our lead up to Christmas, our #authorinsight of the day is from Susmita Bhattacharya, who shared her experience writing the short story, ‘The Truth is a Dangerous Landscape', shortlisted for the 2021 Rhys Davies Short Story Award. Susmita Bhattacharya has graduated Cardiff University with an MA in creative writing and is now lecturing at Winchester University. She has previously published a debut novel The Normal State of Mind with Parthian in 2015, which was longlisted for the Word2Screen Prize at the Mumbai Festival in 2018 and her short story collection Table Manners won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection in 2019. Sumita also facilitates...

We are half-way through our lined-up #authorinsights, and today, for day six, we are presenting an interview with author Joshua Jones. Joshua's short story, 'Half Moon, New Year', was shortlisted for the 2021 Rhys Davies Short Story Award. Joshua is a queer, autistic writer from Llanelli, who also releases music & poetry under the name Human Head. Having graduated with an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa, where he worked on his debut collection of short stories, he is now studying to become a teacher at Cardiff Met. His shortlisted entry, ‘Half Moon, New Year’, depicts a microcosm of young...