FINDING A PLACE TO WRITE AND BE / DOD O HYD I LE YSGRIFFENU O BOD
“Lately, I have thought about writing not as a means of self-expression, but as a means of liberation. It is a rare and brave thing to have your voice and use it, but this dizzying freedom only comes from disentangling the truth of yourself from the self the world has given you. ”
Julie Brominicks, The Edge of Cymru (2022) and Mike Parker, On the Red Hill (2019), All the Wide Border (2023) invite debut authors Lottie Williams and Anthony Shapland to introduce their new books and share their writing journeys for this perfect double bill.
Julie Brominicks
Lottie Williams
Mike Parker
Anthony Shapland
A native of Shropshire, Julie Brominicks attended university at Aberystwyth and spent much of her teaching career in Wales. Her locational nature features and environmental articles are regularly published in BBC Countryfile Magazine and Nation.Cymru. Her book The Edge of Cymru is much more than a simple description of a walking trip, it weaves in the political, social, economic and natural history of Wales. It is also Julie’s own journey, her inner reflections, her environmental and Welsh language activism that make it such a compelling read.
Lottie Williams is an emerging nature/eco writer from Carmarthenshire. Lottie is the winner of the Nigel Jenkins Literary Award 2023 and a Pushcart Prize Nominee, and has been published in Modron, Nation.Cymru, Firewords and Red Door. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Swansea University, and was a member of Literature Wales’s Sgwennu Well programme in which she developed a nature-based writing for wellbeing programme for young people. ‘The Edge of Everything’ is her debut volume of poetic prose and poetry.
Ex stand-up comic, wanderer, former Plaid Cymru candidate and cultural commentator, with several best selling books to his name, Mike was born in England but settled in Wales, and finds himself typical of many in being pulled in both directions, now describing himself as a “Cymro o ddewis” (a Welshman by choice). His love affair with locations and places began as a child and his passion for digging into the layers of history and identity has never gone away.
Mike’s award winning book, On the Red Hill (2019), described as an ‘intense, fascinating account of queer lives in rural Wales’, and his most recent book, All the Wide Border (2023), are each warm and timely meditations on identity and belonging.
ANTHONY SHAPLAND grew up in Bargoed, South Wales. He is a writer and artist, and founder of g39, an artist-led space in Cardiff. His short story ‘Foolscap’ was shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Award and he was selected for the Hay Writers at Work programme in 2023. ‘A Room Above a Shop’ his debut novel, unfolding in South Wales against the backdrop of Section 28, the age of consent debate and the HIV and AIDS crisis, has recently been translated by Esyllt Angharad Lewis, to Welsh, ‘Lan Stâr.
This event is on 18 November, 6.30 - 8.30, in the unique space of Pen’rallt’s ffotogaleri y gofeb, just along from Pen’rallt Bookshop, behind the Machynlleth War Memorial
