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The wait is over for this brand-new collection of emotive and tender short stories from the winners of the 2024 Rhys Davies Short Story Award. Selected by Rebecca F. John and edited by Elaine Canning, A Dictionary of Light includes twelve incredibly touching stories by twelve fantastic writers and a beautiful front cover photo taken by Joshua Jones. Elaine and Rebecca interviewed the winners at Waterstones Swansea for the release of this year’s anthology, discussing inspirations for their writing and what their winning stories mean to them. For Tanya Pengelly, her story was a eulogy in memory of her father....

The Half-life of Snails - April 12, 2023 Whilst the weather today might be wet and windy, safely indoors we are celebrating the breaking news that The Half-life of Snails by Philippa Holloway is on the longlist for the 2023 Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Ondaatje Prize. The annual RSL Ondaatje Prize is awarded to a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, which evokes the spirit of a place. To get on such a prestigious longlist is an outstanding achievement. We caught up with Philippa to find out how it feels to discover that The Half-life of Snails has been longlisted....

The Zimbabwean writer Bryony Rheam has added to her list of accolades by being awarded the Zimbabwean National Arts Merit Award in the category Outstanding Fiction. The award is for her novel All Come to Dust, which was initially published in Zimbabwe before being co-published by Parthian Books and amaBooks in the UK. The National Arts Merit Awards are the premier award given by the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe in recognition of outstanding achievements in the arts and culture. The inaugural award ceremony was held in February 2002. Since then, the award ceremonies have been held in February each...

Congratulations to Alys Conran whose debut novel Pigeon won readers and judges over to take the audience, category and overall prize at the Wales Book of the Year award ceremony in Cardiff last night. The novel, which was also shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize earlier in the year was the first to be released simultaneously in English and Welsh (in translation by Sian Northey as Pijin). 

Alys’s novel was first awarded the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award before moving on to win the main English-language award securing an overall prize of £4,000 as well as a specially commissioned trophy designed and created by the artist Angharad Pearce Jones. The prize was presented to Alys by the Chair of the Arts Council of Wales, Phil George. The readers of Wales agreed wholeheartedly with the judges’ choice this year, as the novel also won the public vote for the Wales Arts Review People’s Choice Award.

Pigeon is a journey through the uneasy half-forgotten memories of childhood; a story about wishful thinking and the power of language.