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Author of the Month: Ursula Kovalyc (July 2017)
Uršuľa Kovalyk is a poet, fiction writer, playwright and social worker. She was born in 1969 in Košice, eastern Slovakia and currently lives in the capital, Bratislava. She has worked for a women's non-profit focusing on women's rights and currently works for the NGO Against the Current, which helps homeless people. Kovalyk is the director of the Theatre With No Home, which features homeless and disabled actors. She has published plays, short stories and novels, and was shortlisted for the Anasoft Litera 2014 for Krasojazdkyña (The Equestrienne). I lived several lives in the brief instant before my feet touched the ground. The music stopped....
Terry Hetherington Award 2017
Last Friday saw the award ceremony for the 2017 Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award, at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea. Writers included in the collection, which is published by Parthian, read poetry and extracts from their prose during an evening which is dedicated to nurturing fresh voices in the memory of a beloved poet and friend. Runner-up Poetry | 1st Prize | Runner-up Fiction Thomas Tyrrell | Christopher Hyatt | Katya Johnson The winner of the award's £1000 prize was Cristopher Hyatt, who's short story 'The Unreasonable Ambition of Steelman, Raymond' about a retired demolition worker who dreams...
Sophie McKeand Blogs about Rebel Sun for Poetry Wales
'The poems in Rebel Sun knit together all of the various elements of experimentation, politics and community I’ve been immersed in over recent years, with a strong focus on (re)connecting with the natural world. I am as much a part of the north Wales landscape as any oak or wave or starling and Rebel Sun is acknowledgement of that.'
'Explaining the exact nature of a poem feels too didactic, but this collection is absolutely about taking a stand politically. I see the after-effects of colonialism as a patriarchal dish still being force-fed to the land and her people in Wales. But after a long winter, maybe spring is coming.'
Read the poem and the blog in full on the Poetry Wales website
Author's Notes: Lloyd Markham Writes about Bad Ideas\Chemicals in the Western Mail
Several years ago. on my way home from a night out, I paused on the old bridge near the centre of town to look at the water below. I think it must have rained upstream or something because the river was surging. It looked strangely inviting to my drunken mind. I stood there watching the murky water for a long time and felt a perverse urge to jump in. Then, a passing police officer, as if sensing the bad ideas in my head, bellowed at me from the other side of the bridge, “Hey, mate, are you okay?” snapping me out of my trance.
Bad Ideas\Chemicals is a book about moments like this. Moments when you feel hypnotised by some irrational urge you cannot fathom.
It is also a book about self-destruction.
The Festival of Bad Ideas (1-9 July 2017)
Join us this summer for The Festival of Bad Ideas (1-9 July) as our Carnival pop-up bookshop returns to Duke Street Arcade in Cardiff. On Saturday 1 July we'll be launching Lloyd Markham's dark and weird novel 'Bad Ideas\Chemicals' at 4pm at 3-7 Duke Street Arcade, with more bad ideas (but no chemicals) to follow throughout the week. In a year of bad ideas, one more can't hurt. Or can it?
We'll also be launching Biddy Wells' travel memoir A Van of One's Own in store on Thursday 6 July at 5.30pm.
