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John Llewellyn Rhys Prize ‘Suspended’

Sponsors of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize, Booktrust, suffered severe funding cuts, which has resulted in the suspension of the popular prize.

The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize is a literary prize and was created to award authors from the Commonwealth under the age of 35.

Jane Oliver initiated the prize for the her husband, John Llewellyn Rhys, a writer who died tragically young, serving in the RAF in 1940.

“The John Llewellyn Rhys prize is one of the most romantic and distinguished of prizes and its disappearance would be a great loss to hopeful authors and he literary world” says Margaret Drabble former John Llewellyn Rhys prize winner.

Booktrust state that they did not take the decision lightly, and they strongly intend to bring back the Prize with a bang in the very near future.

Previous winners of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize:

2010 – Amy Sackville The Still Point
2009 – Evie Wyld After the Fire, A Still Small Voice
2008 – Henry Hitchings The Secret Life of Words
2006/7 – Sarah Hall The Carhullan Army
2005 – Uzodinma Iweala Beasts of No Nation
2004 – Jonathan Trigell Boy A
2003 – Charlotte Mendelson Daughters of Jerusalem
2002 Mary Laven Virgins of Venice
2001 – Susanna Jones The Earthquake Bird
2000 – Edward Platt Leadville

We hope to see the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize return very soon.

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Wales Book of the Year 2011 Ceremony

Wales Book of the Year 2011 Ceremony tickets arrived in the post this morning. The ceremony is to be held in Cineworld, Cardiff next Thursday (7th July) beginning at 7.30pm. Literature Wales have announced that tickets sold out in a record time.

Seren poet Pascale Petit’s latest collection is one of three books shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2011. What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo, contains fifty-two poems in the voice of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Some of the poems are close interpretations of Kahlo’s work, while others are parallels or version homages where Petit draws on her experience as a visual artist to create alternative ‘paintings’ with words. More than just a verse biography, this collection explores how Kahlo transformed trauma into art after the artist’s near-fatal bus accident.

This wonderful collection by Pascale Petit was shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize 2010, and has captured many reviews nationally.

“Pascale’s poems are as fresh as paint, and make you look all over again at Frida and her brilliant and tragic life”— Jackie Kay,  The Observer

“Petit’s collection, exploring the way trauma hurts an artist into creation, celebrates the rebarbative energy with which Kahlo redeemed pain and transformed it into paint”— The Guardian

“Taking Kahlo’s canvases as a spur to imagistic and abstract imagination, Petit establishes a frightening power that presses through the voice of her speaker” — Poetry Review

“No other British poet I am aware of can match the powerful mythic imagination of Pascale Petit.” — Les Murray, Times Literary Supplement

What the Water Gave Me is now also published in America by Black Lawrence Press. Pascale is fresh back from her American tour which was very successful. Fingers crossed for the wonderful and fantastic poet Pascale Petit. We all here at Seren wish her the best of luck.

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‘The Captain’s Tower’ – The Bluecoat, Liverpool

Thursday 23rd June 7.30 – 9.30pm The Bluecoat, Liverpool. Tickets £5/ £4. www.bluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/1015
For lovers of Bob Dylan’s music and lyrics, David Wolley and Phil Bowen launch and read their anthology, co-edited with Damian Furniss The Captain’s Tower: Seventy Poets Celebrate Bob at Seventy, which includes contributors from Roger McGough, Peter Finch, Allen Ginsberg and themselves.

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Launch of The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness

The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness will be launched on Wednesday 22nd June, 6pm at the Ogilvie Theatre Foyer, St. Anne’s College, Woodstock Road, Oxford. Refreshments. RSVP to Seren 01656 663018 or [email protected]

An intricately plotted literary thriller about Ceausescus last hundred days in power, from an author who was a first-hand witness to the regime – Patrick McGuinness’s accomplished debut novel explores a world of danger, repression and corruption.
 

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Forthcoming Title: ‘Jonah Jones: An Artist’s Life’

To be released on 18th July 2011.
Author:

Peter Jones

Sculptor, painter, letter cutter, stained glass artist, novelist, travel writer, academic and administrator; Jonah Jones (1919-2004) was a twentieth century renaissance man.
Born near Newcastle into a family of miners he became a librarian before reluctantly volunteering for a non-combatant role in the Medical Corps during he second world war. He saw action in North Africa but also met a number of artists and craftsmen in the RAMC who fired his own passion to become an artist. After the war, now married and having survived severe case of TB he settled in his family’s homeland of Wales and began his ‘on the job’ education as a sculptor and letter cutter. Much of his early work was at Clough Williams-Ellis’s Portmeirion villages. The two became close friends and Jones widened his circle to include Richard Hughes, Bertrand Russell, John Cowper Powys and Huw Wheldon.

In a varied career Jonah Jones produced intimate sculptures, monumental installations, and beautiful inscriptions, in addition to writing novels published by leading London houses, a biography of Clough Williams-Ellis and a hugely regarded survey of the lakes of North Wales.

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Forthcoming Title: ‘Second Chance’

To be released July 18th 2011.
Author:

Sian James

Kate Rivers has it all; London life, successful acting career, and caring lover Paul. So why, when she is unexpectedly recalled to the Welsh village where she grew up, are both her past and her present such a struggle to come to terms with? Where is Paul when she needs him, and why does her handsome cousin Rhydian seem to feature so much in both her memory and her present dilemma? First Published in 2000, this classic tale is told with skill and sympathy by novelist Sian James.

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Forthcoming Title: ‘Evan Walters: Moments of Vision’

To be released 1st July 2011.
Evan Walters ( 1893-1951) is perhaps the great hidden secret of Welsh painting in the twentieth century, an outstanding artist who awaits discovery beyond Wales. This book presents, for the first time, a generous selection of colour reproductions of his paintings – portraits, landscapes, still lives – with a biographical essay on the artist. The bulk of the book, however, is taken up by a host of responses to the paintings by leading artists, writers, poets and academics including Shani Rhys James, Iwan Bala, Mary Lloyd Jones, Jan Morris, Twm Morys, Nigel Jenkins, Rowan Williams, Dannie Abse, Peter Stead, Prys Morgan, Gillian Clarke, Tim Davies, Mererid Hopwood, Karen Ingham, John Barnie, Jon Gower, Peter Finch, Joe Dunthorne, Menna Elfyn, Janet Dube, Osi Rhys Osmond,  Mel Gooding and many others.The result is revealing of both Walters and the respondents, and becomes a fascinating commentary on creativity and inspiration.The book is unique in one other respect in that all the royalties are being donated to the Noah’s Ark Appeal for the Children’s Hospital of Wales.
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Barry Plummer (ed)

Barry Plummer is an independent researcher of Welsh art. He was awarded a doctorate in 2006 from the University of Wales for his thesis on the life and work of Evan Walters.He has a degree in Visual Art and studied the history of art as a post- graduate at the Courtauld Institute. Between 1999 and 2010 he lectured on Art History at Trinity College, Carmarthen, University of Wales, Swansea and Swansea Metropolitan University.

Books by Barry Plummer
Evan Walters: Moments of Vision

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Robert Seatter

After studying English at Oxford University, Robert Seatter worked variously as an EFL teacher in Italy and France, an actor, a journalist, in publishing and broadcasting. He lives in London where he now works for the BBC. His poetry has been widely published, has won numerous awards and has been featured on radio, television and London buses.

Books by Robert Seatter
On the Beach with Chet Bake
Travelling to the Fish Orchards
Writing King Kong