Francesca Rhydderch’s debut novel, The Rice Paper Diaries has been longlisted for the Authors Club First Novel Award. Francesca joins names such as Lucy Cruickshanks and Kevin Maher as well as Costa first novel award winner Nathan Filer.
The shortlist will be announced on Friday 25 April, and the winner of the 2014  Authors Club First Novel will be awarded a £2,500 prize at a reception on 3rd June at the National Liberal Club by this years guest adjudicator, novelist Isabel Wolff.
Set in 1940s Hong Kong, The Rice Paper Diaries follows the lives of Elsa Jones, her husband Tommy, daughter Mari and their amah Lin. When Hong Kong falls to the Japanese, Elsa and Tommy are captured and interned in a makeshift camp on the southern side of the island, and their relationship is tested to the limit.
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The longstanding creative relationship between poetry and painting is in evidence once again in a new exhibition by artist Sara Philpott, whose latest show What the Earth Thought, is inspired by the poem of that title by Christopher Meredith. The poem, from Meredith’s most recent collection, Air Histories, is a litany of elemental relationships to which Philpott has responded in her characteristically luminous and organic style.The resulting exhibition is held at The Hours Café and Bookshop, in Ship Street, Brecon from 4 April to 2nd May. It’s a place to stumble upon and cherish, says The Guardian. See  www.the-hours.co.uk/  for details.