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Titles that are included in the 3 for 2 offer at selected local book stores:
Touch by Graham Mort – Winner of the Edge Hill Univeristy Short Story Prize 2011. Also includes 2007 Bridport winning short story ‘The Prince’. “A true pleasure from first page to last” New Welsh Review
The Colour of Grass by Nia Williams – “This read will draw you into its story within minutes” Woman Magazine”..witty, wry and charming” Western Mail
Sing Sorrow Sorrow by Gwen Davies – a chilling collection of supernatural myth and otherworldly horror stories from some of Wales’ most exciting new and established authors. “Excellent collection” bookgeeks.co.uk
The Brittle Sea: New and Selected Poems by Paul Henry – “The new, previously unpublished poems…represent the best work of a lyric poet who deserves a wider readership.” TLS
“There’s a consistency of tone and voice in Paul Henry’s work – gentle, regretful and effortlessly musical – stretching from the earliest poems in 1991’s Time Pieces right through to the present day” Magma
Fire Drill: Notes on the twenty-first century by John Barnie – “This reasoned, readable atheistic and humanist collection stares the world uncompromisingly in the face – something most of us try to avoid” Western Mail
Time Being by Ruth Bidgood – WINNER of the Roland Mathias Prize 2011 and also a Poetry Society Recommendation.
The Mabinogion Series – Retelling of the Mabingogion stories
White Ravens by Owen Sheers – “a gripping tale of the unexpected that fuses Welsh myth and modern macabre into a superb, bewitching whole” Sunday Times
“a gripping contemporary story… brilliantly absorbs the magical elements of the original” The Guardian
The Ninth Wave by Russell Celyn Jones – The Ninth Wave is an arresting, contemporary retelling of a centuries-old Welsh myth.
The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis – “It provides a satisfying bizarre context for a narrative about an unfaithful woman made of flowers who turns into an owl, while Lewis’s inspector observes events from a hilariously jobs-worth perspective” The Guardian
“The successful recreation of myth requires a wiliness that exceeds that of the original; myth makers, and Lewis patiently and skillfully demonstrates that wiliness in presenting to her readers” TLS
The Dreams of Max and Ronnie by Niall Griffiths – “..both tales include passages of razor-sharp humour as well as great beauty and poignancy…” New Welsh Review
“Griffiths also supplies the best sign-off of the series so far” The Guardian
Brand New! The White Trail by Fflur Dafydd – Life is tough for Cilydd’s, after his wife Goleuddydd, who is nine months pregnant, seems to vanish into thin air at a supermarket one wintry afternoon. Cilydd gets his cousin, Arthur – a private eye who has never solved a single case – to help him with the investigation.
Brand New! The Prince’s Pen by Horatio Clare – Award-winning author Horatio Clare refracts politics, faith and the contemporary world order through the prism of some of the earliest British myth, the Mabinogion, to ask who are the outsiders, the infidels and who the enemy within.
BOOKSHOPS:
Palas Print – Caernarfon, Palas Print Pendref – Bangor, The Hours – Brecon, Book-ish – Crickhowell, Chepstow Bookshop, Caban – Cardiff, National Musuem of Wales St Fagans – Cardiff, National Musuem of Wales Main Gallery – Cardiff, National Musuem of Wales Roman Legion – Caerleon, Wales Millennium Centre – Portmeirion, Nickleby’s – Llantwit Major, Verzon Books – Llandrindod Wells, Siop Hen Bont – Bridgend, Senedd Bookshop – Cardiff, Siop y Ganolfan – Merthyr, Burway Books – Church Stretton, Pemberton’s – Hay, Arts Centre Bookshop – Aberystwyth,
Tenby Bookshop, Cover to Cover – Mumbles (Swansea), Awen Teifi – Cardigan, National Library of Wales – Aberystwyth, National Museum of Wales Waterfront Museum – Swansea and Siop Sian – Crymych

Seren would like to invite you to help celebrate 30 years of publishing.

Guest of Honour Dannie Abse.
We are having a street party here at Bridgend on the 1st October 2011, 11am – 4pm.
There will be a slice of birthday cake and a soft drink for everyone, also a lucky dip – a free read on us!
Meet the editors and a few of the Seren authors. We will be selling Seren books at discounted prices. Special offers on a range of food all day from the deli based next door to Seren.
Please feel free to bring along family and friends – the more, the merrier.

Fixed Events throughout the day:

12pm-2pm: ‘Meet the Editor’ (Poetry, fiction and non-fiction). Get advice from Seren editors about your unpublished work – to book your 10 minute time slot please send your name and email address to [email protected] – we will allocate a time for you. Spaces are limited!
12pm-1pm and 2pm-3pm: Open Mic slots. Sign up on arrival and read your poetry, fiction or sing some songs. Mike Jenkins and Robert Minhinnick will also be reading at Open Mic.
3pm Guest of Honour Dannie Abse, to make a speech and a short reading.
Raffle tickets on sale throughout the day some great prizes to win including:
A set of six books from the Seren’s Mabinogion series. Signed by authors Owen Sheers, Russell Celyn Jones, Gwyneth Lewis, Niall Griffiths, Horatio Clare and Fflur Dafydd.
A signed copy of the Man Booker Prize 2011 long-listed title ‘The Last Hundred Days’ by Patrick McGuinness.
This event is supported by Literature Wales www.literaturewales.org
This event coincides with Bridgend town’s annual ‘feastival’ – an alternative food festival http://feastival.moonfruit.com/

Join Robert Seatter at the official launch of his latest poetry collection Writing King Kong at RADA in London.Friday September 16th 2011 7pm-9pm The Foyer, RADA, Malet Street, London WC1 7JN
Nearest Tube: Goodge Street, Russell Square, Tottenham Court Road

Tony Curtis will be signing copies of Real South Pembrokeshire at the Tenby Bookshop, Tudor Square, Tenby Saturday  17th September 11am.
Poet, and past resident and frequent visitor Tony Curtis roams south Pembrokeshire, from costal resorts of Tenby and Saundersfoot, west to the surfers of Stackpole and Barafundle and north to the Landsker, the cultural boundary between English speaking south Pembs and the Welsh speaking north.

Join Seren author Barry Plummer in conversation with Roy Noble on the recent publication of Evan Walters: Moments of Vision.
Waterstone’s The Hayes, Cardiff 1st September 2011 6pm-8pm
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 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.
www.noahs-ark-appeal.org

First time novelist Patrick McGuinness is one of the Man Booker dozen on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2011 for fiction announced today.

The Last Hundred Days a literary spy thriller and novel of place, is set in 1989 Bucharest, in the last days of Ceasescu and creates a world of intensity and ravaged beauty as the demolition squads race to destroy the old city and replace it with a sinister Stalinist Legoland. Into this paranoia walks a young English student with a damaged past and an uncertain future to take up a job he never applied for and whose duties are never made clear. He finds dissidents, party apparatchiks, black-marketeers, diplomats, spies and ordinary Romanians, all watching each other as Europe’s most paranoid regime plays out its bloody endgame.

“We are absolutely delighted for Patrick,” said Seren fiction editor Penny Thomas. “This is a stunning debut novel and we are so pleased that it has been recognised by the Man Booker judges. It’s also excellent news for a small independent Welsh press such as Seren.’

The full longlist is:

• Julian Barnes  The Sense of an Ending
• Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side
• Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie
• Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
• Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues
• Yvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats
• Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child
• Stephen Kelman  Pigeon English
• Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days
• AD Miller Snowdrops
• Alison Pick Far to Go
• Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb
• DJ Taylor Derby Day

Patrick McGuinness, poet and Professor or Literature at Oxford University, lived in Romania in the years leading up to the revolution.

The Last Hundred Days is available at www.serenbooks.com at £8.99

TONY CURTIS LAUNCHES REAL SOUTH PEMBROKESHIRE
Join Tony Curtis at the Oriel Queens Gallery, Narberth this Saturday (20th August) for the official launch of the latest addition to the Seren Real Series. 12pm – 2pm with a talk at 1pm. Refreshments. More…
THE LAST HUNDRED DAYS BY PATRICK MCGUINNESS LONG-LISTED FOR MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2011
Patrick McGuinness’s debut novel has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011. The Last Hundred Days is on the longlist with 12 other titles. More…
FORWARD PRIZE SHORTLIST
Nerys Williams Sound Archive and Judy Brown Loudness, both shortlisted for the Forward Prize ‘Best First Collection’ 2011. More…
GRAHAM MORT WINS EDGE HILL UNIVERSITY SHORT STORY PRIZE 2011
Graham Mort scooped the Edge Hill Short Story prize 2011, with his collection Touch. The winner was announced at Blackwells, Charing Cross Road in London. More…

Writing King Kong by Robert Seatter

It’s where I stop in my daily walk,
at the corner of 5th Avenue, 33rd and 34th St.,
budge that obstacle against my daily sun,
blink away its shadow.  The Empire State Building –
just a giant toy, a large crick in my neck.
A version of that ceaseless night train
clattering along its broken tracks… another train,
another robbed and sleepless hour.
All the things that elude me stay in my mind,
stick to my pen. Love given is forgotten, a bed I lie on
to dream my dreams of somewhere else,
but that girl in the penthouse, on Hollywood Blvd.,
with her faraway small teeth that make her
faraway perfect smile, sharp as a photograph,
I could carry forever in my suit breast pocket;
that elusive novel inscribed with gold letters,
‘Merian C. Cooper’ along its spine,
which waits in the bookstore on 33rd East, 17th St.,
it never flickers out inside the dark;
or that sleep of mine…

So I’ll move his black arms to open the latch
of her doll’s house window,
push the tallest tower into a puff of dust,
or – before that – make this detour
to twitch the train off its airfix bridge.
Now there’s sleep and sky and her perfect smile
for me.  Could I write it any better?

Writing King Kong is available to buy at www.serenbooks.com

The Forward Prize shortlist has been announced, and we here at Seren, are thrilled to see two of our poetry titles on the shortlist for ‘Best First Collection’ 2011.
Both Sound Archive by Nerys Williams and Loudness by Judy Brown find themselves shortlisted along with another four poets. 
Sound Archive is a strikingly original first collection of poems. Using formal strategies similar to modernist painting: abstraction, dislocation, surrealist juxtaposition, the poet conjures a complex music, intriguing narratives, and poems full of atmosphere that query identity, gender, and the dream of art as a vehicle for emotion and meaning. 
Nerys Williams is originally from Pen-Y-Bont, Carmarthen in West Wales. A recent winner of the Ted McNulty Poetry Prize, she lectures in American Literature at University College, Dublin.
“Sound Archive is an innovative volume..”– The Irish Times.
Video of Nerys Williams reading from Sound Archive
Judy Brown’s beautiful first collection Loudness, is a straightforward mannerand a gift for ironic humour belie the artful complexities and the exacting observations evident in her work. Loudness will be available to buy at the end of September 2011.
Judy Brown was born in Cheshire and has lived in Northumbria, Cumbria and Hong Kong. She has studied English Literature at Cambridge and Newcastle-upon Tyne and now lives between London (where her ‘day job’ is working part-time as a lawyer) and Derbyshire. She has won the Poetry London and Manchester Festival Poetry prizes and she has placed in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition and others. She is also the author of a prize-winning pamphlet, Pillars of Salt.
The Forward Prize for Best First Collection shortlist:
Rachael Boast Sidereal
Judy Brown Loudness
Nancy Gaffield Tokaido Road
Ahren Warner Confer
John Whale Waterloo Teeth
Nerys Williams Sound Archive
The Forward Prize Best Collection shortlist:
John Burnside  Black Cat Bone
David Harsent Night
Geoffrey Hill Clavics
Michael Longley A Hundred Doors 
D Nurkse Voices Over Water  
Sean O’Brien November 
The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in memory of Michael Donaghy shortlist:
R. F. Langley To a Nightingale
Alan Jenkins Southern Rail (The Four Students) 
Sharon Olds Song the Breasts Sing to the Late-in-Life Boyfriend
Jo Shapcott Bees
Berg by Hilary Menos (Seren 2010) was winner of ‘Best First Collection’ 2010.