After the success of our first double book launch event at the Roath Park pub in Cardiff earlier in October, we bring you our new monthly reading event Picnic featuring guest readers published by Parthian and our friends and a spoken word open mic. This month's debut event features poet and novelist Rhian Elizabeth, essayist Dylan Moore and poet and fiction writer Mari Ellis Dunning. Free entry. 18+ Sign up for the open mic on the night, first come, first served. The open mic will be split across both halves of the evening, interspersed with the guests. Parthian books will also be on sale.
Rhian Elizabeth was born in the Rhondda Valley and now lives in Cardiff. Her novel, Six Pounds Eight Ounces was shortlisted for The International Rubery Book Award and she has been a winner of The Terry Hetherington Young Writers' Award, shortlisted for The Bangor Poetry Prize and highly commended in the Disability Arts Wales poetry competition. Word Ward is a creative writing group she set up for people with long term health conditions. In 2017 she was named by the Welsh agenda as one of Wales’ Rising Stars. She is a Hay Festival Writer at Work and a Coracle Europe International Literary Resident. Her poetry collection the last polar bear on earth is out now.
Dylan Moore is a writer, teacher, and editor of the Institute of Welsh Affairs’ magazine, the Welsh agenda. He serves on the committee of Wales PEN Cymru and is the Hay Festival Creative Wales International Fellow 2018/19. He lives with his family in Newport. Driving Home Both Ways is part essay collection, part travelogue through life – it offers fresh reflections on the changing nature of the local and the global, epiphanies of tribe and faith, and is underscored always by the enduring allure of elsewhere and the constant pull of home.
Mari Ellis Dunning is a writer of poetry and fiction. Her debut children’s book was launched at the Abergavenny Writing Festival in 2016. Mari has been a runner up in the Robin Reeves Prize and twice in The Welsh Poetry Competition; she has been both first place winner and highly commended in the Terry Hetherington Young Writers' Award, has been the winner of Seren’s annual Christmas Poetry Competition, and has work published in several journals and anthologies. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University and currently lives on the coast of Swansea. Her poetry collection Salacia is out now.
