biography

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Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan where he introduced Creative Writing in 1981; he ran this discipline as both an undergraduate and post-graduate subject for nearly thirty years. He was born in Camarthen in 1946 and moved with his parents to Pembrokeshire in 1960. His grandmother’s family had farmed the county for generations and he had been visiting them through his childhood. He played rugby for Pembrokeshire Schoolboys and golf at Tenby before leaving for Swansea University. He and his family have taken over his mother’s house in Lydstep and they stay there frequently.
He has written and edited over thirty books, including The Poetry of Pembrokeshire and has won a number of literary prizes, including a Gregory Award, The Cholmondeley Award, the Dlyan Thomas Prize and the National Poetry Prize. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Literary Society in 2001 and was awarded a D.Litt. from the University of Glamorgan in 2004. His nine collections of poetry all include poems based in Pembrokeshire which deal with its landscape, characters and history.

Books by Tony Curtis

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Nicholas Murray

Nicholas Murray is a biographer, poet, novelist and critic. The author of acclaimed biographies of Matthew Arnold, Andrew Marvell, Aldous Huxley and Franz Kafka, he is also the Royal Literary Fund Writer for Queen Mary College University of London. Visit his website at www.nicholasmurray.co.uk

Books by Nicholas Murray
A Short Book About Love
Real Bloomsbury
Remembering Carmen


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Jon Gower

Jon Gower is a producer with Boomerang, one of Wales’ most dynamically creative TV and radio companies. He was BBC Wales’ Arts and Media correspondent from 2000-2006, when he also presented First Hand, BBC Radio Wales’ arts programme. Jon has also worked, variously, as public affairs officer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and as a current affairs journalist for HTV. He has written books about travel and local history, including An Island Called Smith (Gomer, 2001), about a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay, which was a John Morgan Award winner. He has edited a further four volumes, as well as writing a collection of short stories, Big Fish (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2000).

Jon is currently working on a critical biography of the American actor Steve Buscemi and has recently published a book about his home town, Llanelli, for Seren’s ‘Real Wales’ series. He is an English language judge for the 2011 Wales Book of the Year.

Books by Jon Gower
Real Llanelli

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Niall Griffiths

Niall Griffiths lives near Aberystwyth, and has published seven fiction books to date. His 2004 novel, Stump, won the Welsh Book of the Year Award. He has been published by Bloomsbury and Cape and his work continues to receive strong critical acclaim throughout the UK. Niall is also the author of Real Aberystwth, Real Liverpool and The Dreams of Max and Ronnie (Seren) and is a regular reviewer for The Guardian and a commentator on contemporary writing for a number of magazines.

Books by Niall Griffiths
Real Aberystwyth
Real Liverpool
The Dreams of Max and Ronnie

 

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Anne-Marie Fyfe

Anne-Marie Fyfe was born in Ireland and now lives in West London. A poet,  creative-writing tutor, arts organiser (of the well-known Troubadour club events in London), she was recently Chair of the Poetry Society. She has read throughout the world at festivals and events and on BBC radio and television.

Anne-Marie Fyfe’s poems have a lyric clarity, an ontological accuracy and unflinching vigilance that is both spiritual and revelatory – Tom Paulin

Time, witness, flesh and remembrance – these poems play In the deep end of the pools of image and imagination A rich humanity informs Anne-Marie Fyfe’s new work. The vision is detailed, the voice rings true. – Thomas Lynch

Anne-Marie Fyfe reminds us of the skins we inhabit and shed – TLS (John Greening)

Books by Anne-Marie Fyfe
Understudies: New and Selected Poems


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Nerys Williams

Originally from Pen-Y-Bont, Carmarthen in West Wales, Nerys Williams has published her original first collection of poetry Sound Archive (2011) with Seren. Nerys is a native Welsh speaker and had worked as a Sound Librarian at BBC Wales and is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholar’s Award at UC Berkeley.

A recent winner of the Ted McNulty Poetry Prize, she lectures in American Literature at University College, Dublin. She has published poems, critical essays widely and is the author of A Guide to Contemporary Poetry as well as study of contemporary American poetry, Reading Error.

Books by Nerys Williams
Sound Archive

 

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Pascale Petit

Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in London. Her latest collection What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo(Seren, 2010) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and was a Book of the year in the Observer. Black Lawrence Press published a US edition in 2011. She has published five poetry books, three of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and which were also Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement, Observer and the Independent. Her second collection The Zoo Father was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was published in Mexico in a bilingual edition. A poem from it was shortlisted for a Forward Prize. In 2004 the Poetry Book Society selected Petit as one of the Next Generation Poets.

Petit has won numerous awards, including three from Arts Council England. She trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and was a visual artist for the first part of her life. She is widely travelled, including in the Venezuelan Amazon, China and Nepal. She co-edited Tying the Song (Enitharmon, 2000), the first anthology from The Poetry School, has worked as Poetry Editor for Poetry London and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Middlesex University 2007 – 2009. She currently tutors poetry courses for Tate Modern, the Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd.

Visit Pascale’s website and blog

www.pascalepetit.co.uk and www.pascalepetit.blogspot.com

View videos of Pascale Petit on our website.

For more information on Pascale Petit’s appearances and poetry readings check out our ‘Events’ category on our blog or search on our website.

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Bruce Cardwell

Bruce Cardwell’s connection with horses goes back to his childhood in Ireland.  A long career in the world of the horse includes work with organisations as various as William Hill and the National Trust, a stud farm in the Cotswolds, a millionaire’s stables in Greece and a rest home for horses in Buckinghamshire. He has also trained show-jumpers and owned horses to ride and drive. He has lived in West Wales for many years and is now resident in Aberystwyth

Books by Bruce Cardwell

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Grahame Davies

Grahame Davies is a poet and a critic in Welsh and English, and is a winner of the Wales Book of the Year Award. His work includes the novel, Everything Must Change, and The Chosen People, an anthology about Wales and Judaism. He has a PhD from Cardiff University, where he is an Honorary Research Fellow, and has been awarded an Hon. DLitt from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. His next book of poetry, The Complete Ind Grahame ex of Welsh Emotion, is forthcoming from Seren. Grahame was born in Wrexham but lives now in Cardiff.

Books by Grahame Davies