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Pascale Petit’s collection of poetry What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo has been long listed for the Wales Book of the Year 2011.
What the Water Gave Me 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.
To view all log listed titles click here

Ruth Bidgood wins the Roland Mathias Prize 2011 with her collection of poetry Time Being, published by Seren (2009).
The £3,000 prize was awarded to Ruth Bidgood at ceremony in Roland Mathias’ home town of Brecon, supported by BBC Wales and hosted by Nicola Heywood Thomas, presenter of Radio Wales’ Arts Show.
In future years, it is to be incorporated into the Wales Book of the Year.

David Hurn and John Fuller present Writing the Picture at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff.
Writing the Picture is a rare collaboration between a leading photographer and an eminent poet. Even more rare, it is a collaboration in which the poet responds to images, rather than a photographer or artists ‘illustrating’ a poem. The book evolved from a previous assignment for The Independent in which Fuller agreed to write about Hurn’s pictures “as long as the ‘captions’ could be poetry”.
Join us for a special evening at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff Thursday 7th April 2011 7.30pm £2

Join Nia Williams for the launch of her latest novel The Colour of Grass.
Who did she think she was? Helen’s family is falling apart. There will be no answers from her husband anymore and she can’t communicate with her grown-up daughter. She’s not sure of anything anymore. So she turns to the relatives: the ones who are dead and gone.
George & Delila Café, 104 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JE 5.30pm Tuesday April 5th  2011. Refreshments

Make Mothering Sunday special with some of Seren’s favourite titles
Fiction
Mavis Nicholson – What Did you Do in the War, Mummy? or Martha Jane & Me
Zillah Bethell – Le temps des cerises & Seahorses are Real
Poetry
Carolyn Jess-Cooke – Inroads (Shortlisted for the London Festival Fringe Prize for the Best First Collection of Poetry 2010)
Hilary Menos – Berg (winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection)
Anne-Marie Fyfe – Understudies: New & Selected Poems
 
Get Women’s Work by Eva Salzman & Amy Wack (Hardback) Half Price NOW £12.50 (Limited time offer)
Join Seren’s free online book club and get 20% off every book you order.

Graham Mort’s book of Short Stories Touch, has been longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Touch which was published by Seren in 2010, is on this year’s long-list with an impressive range of award-winning writers.
Touch includes a Bridport prize-winning story “The Prince” and was described by Novelist and Bridport judge Tracy Chevalier as “the writing is word-perfect.. with the story quietly remarking on how something out of the ordinary both does and doesn’t affect daily life. In particular, I was enchanted by deft descriptions of nature”.
Also on the longlist is Roshi Fernando, who features in Sing Sorrow Sorrow, an anthology also published by Seren.
Short-list to be announced in May and the winner will be announced at an award ceremony at Blackwell Bookshop, Charing Cross Road in July.

Pascale Petit will be reading from What the Water Gave Me, at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. A poetry collection containing fifty-two poems in the voice of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Some of the poems are close interpretations of Kahlo’s work, others are parallels or version homages where Petit draws on her experience as a visual artist to create alternative ‘paintings’ with words.
Saturday 2nd April 1.30-2.30pm YMCA, Swindon Road, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ. Please visit Cheltenham Poetry Festival for more information.
Also Pascale Petit will read at Bath Spa University Stand Up Poetry Series Reading Monday 11th April 8pm. Want to know more? Click here

We are giving away 5 proof copies of Tony Bianchi’s latest novel Daniel’s Beetles, 10 weeks before official publication. Daniel’s Beetles is the author’s translation of his prizewinning Welsh novel, Pryfeta. Daniel’s Beetles is an absorbing, unnerving novel about memory and forgetting, stories and lies. It describes our attempts to recreate ourselves in ways we can never fully control.
All you have to do is write Daniel’s Beetles in the subject line of an email and send to [email protected]
Closing date is 4th April 2011. See Terms & Conditions

Swansea-based author Roshi Fernando is one of six authors shortlisted for the 2011 Sunday Times EFG Bank Short Story Award, with the winner to be announced at the Oxford Literary Festival on April 8th 2011.
Roshi, whose work was first anthologised by Seren has been shortlisted for her story ‘The Fluorescent Jacket’, part of her first novel Homesick which won the Impress Prize for New Writers in 2009 and was published by Impress last year.
The novel is composite of seventeen interwoven short stories about a community of Sri Lankan immigrants carving out new lives in a hostile Britain.
“Three Cuts”, her bloody retelling of the Cinderella story, was published last October in the Seren anthology of myth and horror stories Sing Sorrow Sorrow, edited by Gwen Davies.
Roshi, born in London 1966, is currently finishing a PhD in Creative Writing at Swansea University.
Judges, including Melvyn Bragg and AS Byatt, announced the shortlist on March 13, with the top contenders are Booker prizewinner Hilary Mantel, Will Cohu, Gerard Woodward, Anthony Doerr and Yiyun Li.