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Alys Conran and Peter Lord won their respective categories at the 2017 Wales Book of the Year. Alys's Pigeon won three awards, including the People's Choice Award, the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, and the English-language Wales Book of the Year award. Her husband was carrying the trophies around afterward and I imagine his hands were getting tired.    Peter Lord meanwhile won the Creative Non-fiction Award for The Tradition, a work he was quick to point out was made possible by many including the talented book designer Olwen Fowler. Talking to Peter afterward, his passion for the art, and art specifically that...

Parthian is hosting a design contest for the cover of Cheval 11, the collection of poetry and short stories selected from submissions to the Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award. To submit your design (203 x 127 mm), email to maria.zygog@gmail.com. The deadline for your submission is March 1, 2018. We look forward to reviewing your submissions.

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. 

Join us for an afternoon of poetry from Wales and the World at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London Fitzrovia. We will be featuring poets with links to London and Wales and poetry in translation published by Parthian Books and their friends.

Poets performing include Eleni Cay (A Butterfly's Trembling in the Digital Age, Parthian, 2017), Rebecca Parfitt (The Days After, Listen Softly London, 2017), and Tracey Rhys (Teaching a Bird to Sing, Green Bottle Press, 2016).

The event will be hosted by London-born, Cardiff-based poet Susie Wild, who will also be reading from her new collection Better Houses.

Congratulations to Ece Temelkuran, winner of the 2017 First Book Award for her novel Women Who Blow on Knots! The Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award list featured debut novels and short story collections from the festival's programme. Ece's Women Who Blow on Knots, first translated into English in 2017, was voted by visitors of the EIBF2017 among 50 other titles as the winner of the First Book Award. Women Who Blow on Knots is a book that takes the reader on a road trip of the mind in the company of four remarkable women racing across the Middle East at the end...