by Dai Smith
Jo Mazelis
Jo Mazelis was born in 1956 in Swansea, where she still lives. Her collection of stories Diving Girls (2002) was shortlisted for Commonwealth Best First Book and Welsh Book of the Year. Her second book Circle Games was published in 2005 and her short stories have been widely published and broadcast by the BBC. Her first novel, Significance, is due to be published in 2014.
Catherine Merriman
Catherine Merriman was born in 1949 in London, but has lived in Wales since 1973. She has published five novels, the first of which, Leaving the Light On (1992), won the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award in 1992, and three short-story collections, including Silly Mothers in 1991, and many of her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in, among others, New Welsh Review, Everywoman and Essentials. She currently teaches writing at the University of South Wales.
Mike Jenkins
Mike Jenkins was born in 1953 in Aberystwyth, and was educated at University College of Wales before becoming an English teacher. He won the 1998 Wales Book of the Year for his short-story collection Wanting to Belong (1997), and he has written two novellas – Barbsmashive (2002) and The Fugitive Three (2008) – and a novel – Question Island (2013). He appears frequently on radio and television, and lives in Merthyr Tydfil.
Leonora Brito
Leonora Brito was born in Cardiff. She studied law and history at Cardiff University. Her story ‘Dat’s Love’ won her the 1991 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. She also wrote for radio and television, providing a unique insight into Afro-Caribbean Welsh society, largely unrepresented in Welsh writing until her work appeared. She published one collection of stories, Dat’s Love, in 1996. She died in 2007.
Stevie Davies
Stevie Davies was born in Swansea. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Welsh Academy. She has published novels and books in the fields of biography, literary criticism and history. Her novels have been longlisted for the Booker and Orange Prizes and The Element of Water (2001) won the Wales Book of the Year Award for 2002. Her novel Awakening was published in 2013.
Tessa Hadley
Tessa Hadley was born in 1956 in Bristol, and studied English Literature at Cambridge. She has published four novels and one collection of stories, as well as a work of literary criticism. Her short stories appear regularly in, among others, Granta and the New Yorker. She has lived in Cardiff since 1982.
Huw Lawrence
Huw Lawrence was born in Llanelli, and trained as a teacher in Swansea before resuming his education at Manchester and Cornell Universities. He is a three-time winner of prizes in the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition, a Bridport prize and a runner-up position in the 2009 Tom Gallon Trust Competition. His debut collection of short stories, Always the Love of Someone, was published in 2010. He lives in Aberystwyth.
Gee Williams
Gee Williams was born in Saltney, Flintshire, and studied English at Oxford. She was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for Salvage (2007). Her short-story collection Blood, etc. was published in 2008.
Rachel Trezise
Rachel Trezise was born in 1978 in the Rhondda Valley, where she still lives, and studied at the universities of Glamorgan and Limerick. Her novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won an Orange Futures Award in 2002, and her short-story collection, Fresh Apples (2005) won the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize. Her play, Tonypandemonium was staged by National Theatre Wales in 2013.
Des Barry
Des Barry was born in 1955 in Merthyr Tydfil, and was educated at University College London. His debut novel, The Chivalry of Crime (2001), won the Western Writers of America’s Best First Novel of the Year Award. Cressida’s Bed was published in 2004 and he has had short stories published in The New Yorker, The Big Issue and Granta, as well as in several anthologies. Aside from Wales, he has lived in Italy, the USA and Tibet.
Nigel Jarrett
Nigel Jarrett was born in Llanfrechfa, Cwmbran. He won the Rhys Davies Award for his short story ‘Mrs Kuroda on Penyfan’. His debut collection of stories, Funderland was published in 2010. He is a former daily-newspaper journalist. Since 1987 he has been music critic of the South Wales Argus and he reviews jazz for Jazz Journal and poetry for Acumen. He lives in Monmouthshire.
Lewis Davies
Lewis Davies was born in 1967 in Penrhiwtyn. His work includes novels, plays, poetry and essays. He won the Rhys
Davies Prize for his story ‘Mr Roopratna’s Chocolate’. His selected stories Love and Other Possibilities was published in 2008. He is one of the founding partners of the publishing company Parthian.
Aled Islwyn
Aled Islwyn was born in 1953 in Port Talbot. He has written and published extensively in Welsh. He won the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize at the National Eisteddfod in 1980 and again in 1985. His collection of short stories, Unigolion, Unigeddau (1994) won the Welsh Book of the Year Prize. Out With It (2008) is his first collection of stories in English.
Siân Preece
Siân Preece was born in Neath, and has lived for extended periods in Canada and France and Scotland. Her story collection, From the Life, was published in 2000. She won first prize in the 2009 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition for her story ‘Getting Up’.
Robert Nisbet
Robert Nisbet was born in 1941 in Haverfordwest, and was educated at Milford Haven Grammar School, University College of Swansea and the University of Essex. His stories have been published in a wide range of magazines in Europe and the United States. As well as enjoying a successful career in education, he has been a regular contributor to BBC radio and has edited a number of short-story anthologies. His selected short-story collection, Downtrain, was published in 2004.
Jon Gower
Jon Gower was born in 1959 in Llanelli, and read English at Cambridge University. He is a writer, performer and broadcaster. 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) and Big Fish (2000). Too Cold For Snow, a collection of short stories, was released in 2012.
Robert Minhinnick
Robert Minhinnick was born in 1952 in Neath. He is a poet, essayist, editor and novelist who has twice won the Wales Book of the Year Award: in 1993 for Watching the Fire Eater (1992) and in 2006 for To Babel and Back (2005). His poetry has been published internationally and he has won an Eric Gregory Award and the Cholmondeley Prize.
Emyr Humphreys
Emyr Humphreys was born in 1919 in Prestatyn. A former theatre and television director, drama producer and lecturer, in a long and illustrious career he has written and released twenty novels, several short-story and poetry compilations, and a history volume, as well as produced a number of screenplays. He has won several literary prizes during his career – the 1958 Somerset Maugham Prize for Hear and Forgive (1952), the 1958 Hawthornden Prize for A Toy Epic (1958), and the Welsh Book of the Year Award twice, for Bonds of Attachment (1992) and The Gift of a Daughter (1999). He lives in Llanfairpwll on Anglesey.
EDITOR BIOGRAPHY
Dai Smith was born in 1945 in the Rhondda. He was educated in South Wales before reading modern history at Balliol College, Oxford and comparative literature at Columbia University, New York. He has been a lecturer at the universities of Lancaster, Swansea and Cardiff, where he was awarded a Personal Chair in 1986, and was subsequently a Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Glamorgan. In addition to his academic career, he has also been a regular broadcaster on radio and television since the 1970s, and he became Head of Programmes (English language) in the 1990s at BBC Wales where he commissioned, presented and scripted a number of award-winning documentary programmes and other series. His many publications, which span books, articles and journalism, have centred on the dynamics – culture and society, politics and lite
rature – of his native South Wales, and most recently have expanded into the form of biography (Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale, 2008), memoir (In The Frame: Memory in Society, 2010) and the novel (Dream On, 2013).
Dai Smith was the founding editor of the Library of Wales Series. He has led Arts Council Wales as its Chair since 2006. He holds a part-time Research Chair in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University. He is now writing more fiction.
PUBLISHED LIST
‘Gazooka’ – published in Gazooka and Other Stories (Gollancz, 1957)
‘A Christmas Story’ – published in A Christmas Story (Heinemann, 1964)
‘Natives’ – published in Pieces of Eight, ed. by Robert Nisbet (Gomer, 1982)
‘A Roman Spring’ – published in The Atlantic Monthly, issue dated Feb, 1972
‘A View of the Estuary’ – published in The Collected Short Stories of Roland Mathias, ed. by Sam Adams (University of Wales Press, 2001)
‘The Inheritance’ published in Pieces of Eight, ed. by Robert Nisbet (Gomer, 1982)
‘The Way Back’ – published in The Anglo-Welsh Review, No. 67, 1980
‘A Sort of Homecoming’ – published in Ghosts of The Old Year: New Welsh Short Fiction (Parthian, 2003)
‘That Old Black Pasture’ – published in Panurge, No. 24, 1996
‘The Writing on the Wall’ – published in Colours of a New Day, ed. by Sarah Lefanu and Stephen Hayward (Lawrence and Wishart, 1990)
‘Bowels Jones’ – published in The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil and Other Stories (Michael Joseph, 1976)
‘Strawberry Cream’ – published in New Welsh Review No. 36, Spring 1997
‘Whinberries’ & ‘Stones’ – published in Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful (Parthian, 2008)
‘November Kill’ – published in New Welsh Review, No. 1, 1988
‘Foxy’ – published in Magpies: Short Stories from Wales, ed. by Robert Nisbet (Gomer, 2000)
‘Charity’ – published in Planet, No. 103, 1994
‘Too Perfect’ – published in Diving Girls (Parthian, 2002)
‘Barbecue’ – published in New Welsh Review, No. 17, Summer 1992
‘Wanting to Belong’ – published in Wanting to Belong (Seren, 1997)
‘Mama’s Baby (Papa’s Maybe)’ – published in Mama’s Baby (Papa’s Maybe): New Welsh Short Fiction, ed. by Lewis Davies and Arthur Smith (Parthian, 1999)
‘Some Kind o’ Beginnin’ – published in Graffiti Narratives: Poems ‘n’ Stories (Planet, 1994)
‘Dat’s Love’ – published in Dat’s Love (Seren, 1995)
‘Woman Recumbent’ – published in Ghosts of the Old Year: New Welsh Short Fiction (Parthian, 2003)
‘The Enemy’ – Granta, No. 86, Summer, 2004
‘We Have Been to the Moon’ – published in Eagle in the Maze (Cinnamon Press, 2008)
‘Pod’ – published in Ghosts of the Old Year: New Welsh Short Fiction (Parthian, 2003)
‘Blood etc.’ – published in Blood, etc. (Parthian, 2008)
‘Fresh Apples’ – published in Fresh Apples (Parthian, 2005)
‘Waste Flesh’ – published in Magic and Other Deceptions (Gwasg Gee, 2000)
‘Dalton’s Box’ – published in The New Yorker, issue dated Apr 23, 2001
‘Mrs Kuroda on Penyfan’ – published in Funderland (Parthian, 2011)
‘The Ferryman’s Daughter’ – published in New Welsh Review, No. 4, Spring 1989
‘The Fare’ – published in Urban Welsh: New Welsh Short Fiction, ed. by Lewis Davies (Parthian, 2005)
‘Muscles Came Easy’ – published in Out With It (Parthian, 2008)
‘Running Out’ – published in From the Life and Other Stories (Polygon, 2000)
‘Miss Grey of Market Street’ – published in Downtrain (Parthian, 2004)
‘The Stars Above the City’ – published in Love and Other Possibilities (Parthian, 2008)
‘The Last Jumpshot’ – published in Urban Welsh: New Welsh Short Fiction, ed. by Lewis Davies (Parthian, 2005)
‘Chickens’ – published in Fresh Apples (Parthian, 2005)
‘Bunting’ – published in Too Cold for Snow (Parthian, 2012)
‘I Say a Little Prayer’ – published in The Keys of Babylon (Seren, 2011)
‘Old People Are a Problem’ – published in Old People Are a Problem (Seren, 2003)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PUBLISHER'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Parthian would like to thank all the writers, estate holders and publishers for their cooperation in the preparation of this volume. We would also like to thank the editor, Dai Smith, for his energy and engagement with the world of the Welsh short story.
Although every effort has been to secure permissions prior to publication this has not always been possible. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and will if contacted rectify these at the earliest opportunity.
FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The publishers would like to thank Mick Felton of Seren Books for assistance in the preparation of this volume. We would also like to thank the estate of Dylan Thomas, David Higham Associates and Liam Hanley for permission to publish the stories of Dylan Thomas and James Hanley. Ravinda Jasser for the estate of Brenda Chamberlain. Meic Stephens for copyright assistance with the estates of Rhys Davies and Leslie Norris. Merryn Hemp for the estate of Raymond Williams. Dr Lesley Coburn for the estate of Ron Berry. Geoffrey Robinson for the estate of Gwyn Thomas. Helen Richards for the estate of Alun Richards. Myfanwy Lumsden for the estate of Geraint Goodwin. Matthew Evans for the estate of George Ewart Evans. Glyn Mathias for the estate of Roland Mathias. Viv Davies for the estate of B.L. Coombes.
EDITOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, as now over a lifetime, to Norette for allowing me (again) to sequester myself away for months on end with other people’s lives. And their stories. To particular friends and advisers, especially Meic Stephens; and to Sam Adams, Peter Finch, Tony Brown and Daniel Williams. To the various editors and selectors who stepped out onto these highways and byways before me, and, of course, to the odd (sometimes very odd!) tipster who nudged me into unexpected diversions. All at Parthian have proved as exemplary in the arduous production of these two volumes as they have been since the inception of the Library of Wales Series in 2006. But, here, I need to single out the principal editorial assistance of the indefatigable Robert Harries who, like me, has now read all the words all of the time, and more than once.
LIBRARY OF WALES
The Library of Wales is a Welsh Government project designed to ensure that all of the rich and extensive literature of Wales which has been written in English will now be made available to readers in and beyond Wales. Sustaining this wider literary heritage is understood by the Welsh Government to be a key component in creating and disseminating an ongoing sense of modern Welsh culture and history for the future Wales which is now emerging from contemporary society. Through these texts, until now unavailable or out-of-print or merely forgotten, the Library of Wales will bring back into play the voices and actions of the human experience that has made us, in all our complexity, a Welsh people.
The Library of Wales will include prose as well as poetry, essays as well as fiction, anthologies as well as memoirs, drama as well as journalism. It will complement the names and texts that are already in the public domain and seek to include the best of Welsh writing in English, as well as to showcase what has been unjustly neglected. No boundaries will limit the ambition of the Library of Wales to open up the borders that have denied some of our best writers a presence in a future Wales. The Library of Wales has been created with that Wales in mind: a young country not afraid to remember what it might yet become.
Dai Smith
LIBRARY OF WALES
Funded by
SERIES EDITOR: DAI SMITH
1 So Long, Hector Bebb Ron Berry
2 Border Country Raymond Williams
3 The Dark Philos
ophers Gwyn Thomas
4 Cwmardy & We Live Lewis Jones
5 Country Dance Margiad Evans
6 A Man’s Estate Emyr Humphreys
7 Home to an Empty House Alun Richards
8 In the Green Tree Alun Lewis
9 Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve Dannie Abse
10 Poetry 1900–2000 Ed. Meic Stephens
11 Sport Ed. Gareth Williams
12 The Withered Root Rhys Davies
13 Rhapsody Dorothy Edwards
14 Jampot Smith Jeremy Brooks
15 The Voices of the Children George Ewart Evans
16 I Sent a Letter to My Love Bernice Rubens
17 Congratulate the Devil Howell Davies
18 The Heyday in the Blood Geraint Goodwin
19 The Alone to the Alone Gwyn Thomas
20 The Caves of Alienation Stuart Evans
21 A Rope of Vines Brenda Chamberlain
22 Black Parade Jack Jones
23 Dai Country Alun Richards
24 The Valley, the City, the Village Glyn Jones
25 The Great God Pan Arthur Machen
26 The Hill of Dreams Arthur Machen
27 The Battle to the Weak Hilda Vaughan
28 Turf or Stone Margiad Evans
29 Make Room for the Jester Stead Jones
30 Goodbye, Twentieth Century Dannie Abse
