#Dewithon24 – Let’s Meet Some Authors From Wales

Since March is Wales Reading Month 2024 (also known as #Dewithon) , i now have the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the talented writers who are either from Wales or have chosen to make their home here.

Below you’ll find some of the authors who have featured on the blog through my Meet a Welsh Author series. They represent a mix of genres so whether your tastes incline to historical fiction or crime fiction; travelogues or literary fiction; thrillers or novellas, there should be an author here to suit you.

Beverley Jones

Beverley is an author of dark psychological thrillers which draw on the knowledge of crime and the murkier side of human nature she gained from working as a media manager and press officer for a police force.

One of her novels — Wilderness — was adapted for TV and became a highly rated series on Amazon Prime.

Discover more about Beverley and her love of Margaret Attwood’s work in this blog post.

Cath Barton

Cath Barton won the New Welsh Writing AmeriCymru Prize for her first novella  — The Plankton Collector. Since then she’s had several more novellas and a novel published including the wonderful In The Sweep of The Bay which explores a long marriage and a relationship where love has faded. 

In her Meet a Welsh Author Q&A Cath explained why she has fallen out of love with an author she previously loved.

Mike Parker

Mike’s love affair with maps, boundaries and places began as a young child. He’s translated that passion into a successful career writing guide books including the Rough Guide to Wales and travel series for television such as Coast to Coast.

His book — On the Red Hill — was Highly Commended in the 2020 Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing and won the non-fiction Wales Book of the Year Award.   In his most recent book, All the Wide Border — Wales, England and The Places Between — he travels a route along the England–Wales border, examining the concept of borders, our fascination with them, our need for them, and our response to their power. 

For more insight about Mike, check out his Meet a Welsh author feature.

Sara Gethin

Under the pen name of Wendy White, Sara Gethin has published four novels for children including the award-winning Welsh Cakes and Custard.

Her novels for adults published as Sara Gethin are disturbing and thought-provoking books about childhood trauma and friendship. Her first venture into adult fiction came with Not Thomas, which was shortlisted for the The Guardian’s “Not the Booker prize” project in 2017 and the 2018 Waverton Good Read Award.

Though this novel and her second, Emmet and Me, deal with difficult subjects about neglect and abuse, she tackles these with considerable sensitivity and understanding of a child’s point of view.

Chris Lloyd

The inspiration for Chris’s novels comes from the decades during which he lived and worked in Spain and France. His first venture into fiction was a crime trilogy set in present-day Girona, in northern Catalonia, featuring a police officer in the devolved Catalan police force.

Now back in his homeland of Wales, he is part way through a second series, this time based in France during the time of the Nazi occupation. The first book in the series – The Unwanted Dead – won the HWA Gold Crown Award for best historical novel of the year and was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award for the best historical crime fiction.

In his Meet a Welsh author feature on this blog he talks about his earliest memories of discovering books in his local library.

Alis Hawkins

Alis is the author of the Teifi Valley Coroner series, a meticulously researched series set in West Wales in the mid nineteenth century. The main character is Harry Probert, a squire’s son who — in the absence of a professional police service — becomes the primary investigator of crime in the rural communities of the Teifi Valley. If you like historical fiction that gives you a real sense of a place and a period in time, this series could be an ideal reading companion.

Find out more about Alis and her role in the Crime Cymru initiative here in her Meet a Welsh Author feature.

I hope I’ve tickled your fancy with this sample of contemporary authors from Wales. If there’s someone you’ve discovered who you think deserves to be featured, just leave me a comment!