Patience Agbabi FRSL is the author of four poetry collections including Telling Tales, a 21st century retelling of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Agbabi’s debut, middle-grade novel, The Infinite (Canongate, 2020), won Wales Book of the Year 2021: Children & Young People category.
Abeer Ameer’s poems have appeared widely in journals including Acumen, The Rialto, The Poetry Review, Magma, New Welsh Reader and Poetry Wales. Her debut poetry collection, Inhale/Exile, in which she shares stories of Iraq, was published by Seren in 2021 and shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2022.
Elin ap Hywel is a Welsh poet, translator and editor. Her collected poems in Welsh, Dal i Fod (Still Here), edited by Menna Elfyn, was published by Barddas in 2020 and was short-listed for the Wales Book of the Year Award in 2021.
P.A.Bitez or Princess Arinola Adegbite is a poet, musician, voiceover artist, and filmmaker from Manchester. She is a winner of Slambassadors, BBC Words First 2020, One Mic Stand 2021, Common Word Going Digital, and Manchester Young Creative of The Year 2021. She is a Young Identity member. Bitez received a Castlefield Gallery Associates prize for her film Drapetomania and was commissioned by Selfridges, BBC, and the University of Cambridge. She’s been longlisted for the AUB International 2022 Poetry Prize.
Author Sophie Buchaillard is the former policy advisor for the collective Stop Climate Coalition Cymru and a contributor to An Open Door: New Travel Writing for A Precarious Century (Parthian, 2022). A long-term environment campaigner, she shares her experience of living a plastic-free lifestyle on Twitter @growriter #plasticfree . Her debut novel This Is Not Who We Are (Seren, 2022) focuses on the themes of identity and migration.
Anthony Vahni Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Capildeo’s eight books and eight pamphlets include Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet, November 2021) and The Dusty Angel (Oystercatcher, 2021). Their interests include plurilingualism, traditional masquerade, and multidisciplinary collaboration.
Claire Crowther has published five collections with Shearsman. Solar Cruise was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Best First Collection prize and received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Claire has a PhD in Creative Writing, teaches Creative Writing at Oxford University and is Deputy / Reviews Editor of Long Poem Magazine.
Australian Cath Drake‘s collection, The Shaking City (Seren), highly commended in the 2020 UK Forward Prize and longlisted in international Laurel Prize, followed Sleeping with Rivers, a Poetry Book Society choice & winner of the Seren/Mslexia pamphlet prize. She hosts The Verandah, quality online poetry teaching & events, and is an award-winning journalist and mindfulness teacher with a specialism in environmental issues. https://cathdrake.com
Taylor Edmonds is a poet and writer from South Wales. Her debut pamphlet Back Teeth was published with Broken Sleep Books in 2022. Taylor was previously Poet in Residence for the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. Her publications include Poetry Wales, Butcher’s Dog, BBC Wales and Parthian.
Pat Edwards is a writer, reviewer and workshop leader from mid Wales. Her work has appeared in Magma, Atrium, and IS&T. Pat hosts Verbatim open mic nights and curates Welshpool Poetry Festival. She has three pamphlets: Only Blood (Yaffle 2019); Kissing in the Dark (Indigo); Hail Marys (Infinity Books UK).
Laura Fisk‘s translations of Elin ap Hywel’s poetry have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation and Syndic. Recent publications of her own work include full collections translated into Estonian by Ilmar Lehtpere and Macedonian by Julijana Velichkovska.
Michael Goodfellow is the author of the poetry collection Naturalism, an Annotated Bibliography, published by Gaspereau Press, 2022, and of a collection in draft titled Folklore of Lunenburg County, which is supported by a Research & Creation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Literary Review of Canada, The Dalhousie Review, The Cortland Review, and Reliquiae. He lives in Nova Scotia.
Richard Gwyn is a Welsh writer and translator. His most recent poetry collection is Stowaway and his latest novel is The Blue Tent. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages. He is the author of Ricardo Blanco’s Blog, which can be found at richardgwyn.me.
Paul Henry’s books include The Brittle Sea, Boy Running and The Glass Aisle. Originally a songwriter, he’s guest-edited Poetry Wales and presented arts programmes for BBC Radio Wales, Radio 3 and Radio 4. As If To Sing, his latest Seren collection, appeared in the Spring.
Suzanne Iuppa is a poet and conservationist living and working in the Dyfi Valley, mid Wales. Recent work appears in Natur Cymru, Ambit, Bad Lilies, Poetry Wales, and Gorwelion, a climate futures anthology edited by Robert Minhinnick. She is mentored by Photojournalism Hub, London for visual narratives of climate adaptation.
Dyfan Lewis is a writer and publisher from Craig-cefn-parc. He has published two poetry pamphlets – Golau (2018) and Mawr (2019) as well as a collection of travel essays Amser Mynd (2020). All were published through Gwasg Pelydr, an independent press set up by himself. He curates the experimental cultural labyrinth creiriau.cymru, and along with Steffan Dafydd is the creator of Creiriau Sain, a live event that blends improvised music and words. At the Eisteddfod AmGen in 2021 he won the crown for his collection of poems
Rachael Li Ming Chong is a poet and teacher of Chinese-Malaysian heritage, born and based in London. She is a winner of The Poetry Archive’s WordView 2021 Competition. Her debut poetry pamphlet The Red Strings Between is forthcoming with Verve Poetry Press in early 2024.
So Mayer is the author, most recently, of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula, 2020) and jacked a kaddish (Litmus, 2018), and co-editor of Unreal Sex (Cipher, 2021) and Mothers of Invention: Film, Media and Caregiving Labor (Wayne State, 2022). They are a bookseller at Burley Fisher Books. @Such_Mayer.
Robert Minhinnick is one of Wales’s and the UK’s foremost poets. He is the prize-winning author of essays, poetry, and fiction. He has also edited a book on the environment in Wales, written for television, and provided columns for The Western Mail and Planet. He is the co-founder of the environmental organisation Sustainable Wales, and was formerly the editor of Poetry Wales. Most recent books are his nonfiction essays Delirium (Seren Books), his novel Nia (Seren Books), and the poetry collection Diary of the Last Man (Carcanet) which was Wales Book of the Year, winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award, and shortlisted for the Forward Prize.
Mae Grug Muse yn fardd ac ysgrifwr o Ddyffryn Nantlle. Daeth ei chyfrol ddiweddaraf, merch y llyn i’r brig yng nghategori barddoniaeth Gwobr Llyfr y Flwyddyn, 2022. Mae hi’n un o sylfaenwyr a golygyddion Cyhoeddiadau’r Stamp a chylchgrawn barddoniaeth Ffosfforws. Mae hi hefyd yn un o gyd-olygyddion y gyfrol Welsh (plural) (Repeater, 2022), cyfrol o ysgrifau sy’n dychmygu Cymru gynhwysol a neilltuol.
Mae Sian Northey yn fardd, awdur, cyfieithydd, golygydd a chyw ddramodydd, ac yn ysgrifennu bron yn gyfangwbl yn Gymraeg (er ei bod wedi bod yn arbrofi ychydig efo Saesneg yn ddiweddar). Ei chyfrol ddiweddaraf o’i gwaith ei hun yw Cylchoedd (Gwasg y Bwthyn, 2020), casgliad o straeon byrion gyda ffotograffau gan Iestyn Hughes. / Sian Northey is a poet, author, translator, editor and wannabe playwright, who works almost completely in Welsh (though she has been experimenting more with English recently). Her latest volume of her own work is Cylchoedd (Gwasg y Bwthyn, 2020) a collection of short stories paired with photographs by Iestyn Hughes.
Ness Owen lives on Ynys Môn (Anglesey) in Wales where she writes poetry between lecturing and farming. ‘Gathering Blooms’ is taken from Moon Jellyfish Can Barely Swim, due for publication by Parthian in April. Her first collection Mamiaith (Mother Tongue) was published in 2019. Her poems have been translated into five different languages. She has recently taken part in Ù O’ | SUO, a poetry exchange project between Wales and Vietnam, supported by the British Council and co-edited the A470, a bilingual poetry anthology about the infamous road running from the north to the south of Wales. Twitter @nessowen
Pascale Petit’s eighth collection, Tiger Girl was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection and for Wales Book of the Year. Her seventh collection Mama Amazonica won the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020, the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize 2018 and was the Poetry Book Society Choice. Four of Pascale’s earlier collections were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet and a critic. Her recent books include Paula Rego: The Art of Story (Thames & Hudson, 2019), Erato (Seren, 2019) and Fires (Shoestring: 2019). She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool and is currently in residence at the Citeì internationale des arts, Paris.
Katherine Robinson‘s poems have appeared in The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland, and The Hudson Review, and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath, and Ted Hughes: Nature and Culture. Katherine is a PhD candidate at Cambridge University, and trustee for Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary, Shetland.
Karishma Sangtani is a poet based in London. Her work appears in magazines such as The North and Ink Sweat and Tears. She was shortlisted for the 2021 Aurora Prize for Writing and the 2022 Creative Future Writers’ Award. Karishma is also a member of the Writing Squad.
Durre Shahwar is a writer and PhD Candidate in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. She is the editor of Gathering (forthcoming 2024), and a Future Wales Fellow. She is the co-founder of ‘Where I’m Coming From’ open mic collective. Her non-fiction work-in-progress was highly commended in the Morley Prize 2022.
Penelope Shuttle lives in Cornwall. Her thirteenth collection, Lyonesse, appeared from Bloodaxe in June 2021, and was Observer Poetry Book of the Month for July 21. Covid/Corvid, a pamphlet written in collaboration with Alyson Hallett, appeared from Broken Sleep Books, September 2021. Father Lear, a pamphlet, was published by Poetry Salzburg in June 2020.
Zoë Skoulding‘s latest collection is A Marginal Sea (Carcanet) and she is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Bangor University.
Iestyn Tyne was brought up in Boduan, Pen Llŷn, and now lives in Caernarfon with his family. He is co-founder and co-editor of Cyhoeddiadau’r Stamp, an independent publishing house platforming new voices in Welsh-language writing. He is co-editor, with Darren Chetty, Grug Muse and Hanan Issa of Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales (Repeater Books, 2022), and his most recent collection of poetry, Stafelloedd Amhenodol, was shortlisted in the Wales Book of the Year 2022 poetry category.
Lottie Williams is a part-time MA student in Creative Writing (Swansea University), and a full-time mum. Alongside spoken word and a number of published poems, flash fiction, articles and reviews, she has featured on the YouTube channel Just Another Poet.
Leanne Wood is co-director of Community Energy Wales, a not for profit membership organisation that has been set up to provide assistance and a voice to community groups working on energy projects in Wales. he has held many roles in political life including local councillor, MS for the Rhondda and leader of Plaid Cymru. She was the first woman to represent the Rhondda and the first woman to lead Plaid Cymru.
Modron Magazine 