Shortlisted for the Sabotage Short Story Award 2015
Longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2015
Longlisted for the Frank O' Connor International Short Story Prize 2015
I am the laugh of a kookaburra. I am a currawong. I am a galah. I am a lyre because I am a lyrebird. I am a performer and I am superb.
Georgia Carys Williams' stories are dark, offbeat, rippling with watery memories and poetic unease. From the bluest Venetian lagoon where a merwoman saves a drowning gondolier to a glass harmonica playing itself along a tideline. Williams is a writer for whom the world is never the safe place: a phantom baby growing older, a granddaughter obsessively peeling tangerines, and a deaf sister conducting music in her sleep are all brought to life in an innovative and perceptive collection from a distinctive new voice.
‘Intricate, touching and astonishingly imaginative...’ Stevie Davies
‘Georgia Carys Williams’ disquieting stories explore the strangeness of existence; its elemental substance, its “being and nothingness”.’ Jo Mazelis
‘Edgy and dark, psychologically needling and vigorously inventive, Second-hand Rain marks the arrival of a singular voice in fiction.’ Jon Gower
Georgia Carys Williams was born in Swansea. She won third prize at the Terry Hetherington Award 2012, highly commended for The South Wales Short Story Competition 2012, was short-listed for the Swansea Life Young Writing Category of the Dylan Thomas Prize, 2008 and for the Wells Festival of Literature 2009. Whilst working on a PhD in Creative Writing at Swansea University, she writes for Wales Arts Review and was commissioned by the Rhys Davies Trust to contribute to WAR's fictional map of Wales series. Most recently, she was shortlisted for New Welsh Review's Flash in the Pen competition, published in Parthian's Rarebit Anthology. Her website can be found here.
Second-Hand Rain in the Press:
'Williams' writing is at once uplifting and upsetting - I cried twice [...] I loved the unpredictability of the collection [...]From a lyrebird to a doomed fetus, each character is completely submerged in their own authentic world.' Mslexia
'Touching, mature and imaginative, this is a wonderful debut collection from an author who looks set to make a significant contribution to the changing shape of Welsh writing as her career develops.' Wales Arts Review