Gwyneth Lewis

Gwyneth Lewis was Wales’ National Poet from 2005-6, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She wrote the six-foot-high words on the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre, rumoured to be the largest poem in the world.

Gwyneth has published nine books of poetry in Welsh and English. In 2010 she was given a Society of Authors Cholmondeley Award recognizing a body of work and achievement of distinction. Besides poetry, Gwyneth is an award-winning writer of non-fiction and screenplays: Gwyneth's first non-fiction book, Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book about Depression (2002) was shortlisted for the Mind Book of the Year, and her first television screenplay, Y Streic a Fi ('The Strike and Me'), commissioned by S4C, won the 2015 BAFTA Wales for Best Drama. Gwyneth is also a writer of fiction: The Meat Tree , a space-age re-imagining of the tale of Blodeuwedd, is part of Seren’s New Stories from the Mabinogion series. Her light-hearted novella, Advantages of the Older Man, explores the strange case of a Swansea woman who is apparently possessed by the ghost of Dylan Thomas.

Gwyneth is a librettist and dramatist and has written two chamber operas for children and an oratorio, all commissioned and performed by Welsh National Opera. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a member of the Welsh Academi and a NESTA Fellow.