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Dai Smith, born in Rhondda in 1945, is a Welsh writer and historian who was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to culture and the arts in Wales. He has been a professor in History at Lancaster University, Cardiff University and Swansea University from 1969 until 1993, being awarded with a personal chair by the University of Wales in 1986. 

In 1993 he took up a position as editor for the BBC, working on Radio Wales and later on in 1994 became the Head of Broadcast (English Language) at BBC Wales, for which he commissioned various award-winning programmes, especially in the Arts and Drama until 2000. He became the Raymond Williams chairman in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University in 2005 and in 2007 he was appointed Arts Council of Wales chairman.

Series Editor of the Library of Wales for classic works written in English from or about Wales, Smith is also chair of the judging panel for the International Dylan Thomas Prize.

Marta Dziurosz reviews The Equestrienne by Slovak writer Uršul’a Kovalyk for the European Literature Network:

'This little book – it is only 80 pages long – packs a punch beyond its size [...] Karolína’s life, as she says at the very end, peaked at a time you’re not supposed to have anything good to say about, yet Kovalyk does not glorify the simpler times of communism. Her riotous, funny and painful parable is of a country and a girl in the throes of a revolution, of order turned upside-down.'

Buy The Equestrienne from Parthian Books

Monday 27th February – Saturday 4th March To open Welsh Art Week London 2017, Professor Dai Smith CBE will talk about his new work of fiction What I Know I Cannot Say/ All That Lies Beneath Monday 27 Feb,  6–8pm Dai Smith is one of the leading Welsh writers of his generation with a national and international profile. His work encompasses ground-breaking history (Wales, Wales), biography (Raymond Williams A Warrior’s Tale) and fiction Dream On. He has also found time to write accounts of the those intrinsically Welsh institutions in The Fed the biography of the NUM (with Hywel Francis)...

Congratulations to Alys Conran whose debut novel Pigeon is one of 12 books by writers aged 39 and under longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2017. 'An exquisite novel by a great new writer' – M.J Hyland Two New York Times bestsellers and the winner of the 2016 Waterstones Book of the Year are among 12 books on the longlist for the £30,000 International Dylan Thomas Prize in partnership with Swansea University.  Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the prize is named after the Swansea-born writer, Dylan...

Natalie Ann Holborow is a Swansea-born writer of poetry and fiction. In 2015, she won both the Terry Hetherington Award and the Robin Reeves Prize, and in 2016 was named as runner-up in the Wales PENCymru New Voices Award. She has been recommended and shortlisted for various others including the Bridport Prize and Hippocrates Prize. Natalie’s work has recently appeared in The Stinging Fly and the New Welsh Review.  Her debut poetry collection And Suddenly You Find Yourself is due to be published with Parthian in March 2017. The poems in this collection explore what it means to be human: where the mythological meets the modern, where...