New Welsh Short Stories (29 page)

Cynan Jones
was born near Aberaeron, Wales in 1975. He is the author of four novels,
The Long Dry
(Parthian, 2006) – winner of a 2007 Society of Authors Betty Trask Award –
Everything I Found on the Beach
(Parthian, 2011),
Bird, Blood, Snow
(Seren 2012), and most recently
The Dig
(Granta, 2014) – winner of a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. The novels have been translated into several languages, and short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications including
Granta
and
New Welsh Review
. ‘A Letter from Wales' was first published by Granta online.

Tyler Keevil
was born in Edmonton and grew up in Vancouver, and in his mid
-
twenties he moved to Wales, where he now lives. He is the author of two novels and a collection of short fiction, and his stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies in Britain, Canada, and the United States. He has received numerous awards for his writing, most recently the Writers'
Trust of Canada Journey Prize for his story, ‘Sealskin'.
Among other things, he has worked as a tree planter, ice
-
barge deckhand and shipyard labourer; he currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire.

Jo Mazelis
is a novelist, short story writer and essayist. Her collection of stories
Diving Girls
(Parthian, 2002) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Best First Book and Wales Book of the Year Awards. Her second book,
Circle Games
(Parthian, 2005), was longlisted for Welsh Book of the Year. She was born in Swansea where she currently lives. Originally trained at Art School, she worked for many years in London in magazine publishing as a freelance photographer, designer and illustrator, before studying for an MA in English Literature. In 2014 her novel
Significance
was published by Seren.

Robert Minhinnick
publishes the novel
Limestone Man
with Seren in 2015. His short fiction has appeared in
Best European Fiction
2014 (Dalkey) and the Library of
Wales
Story
(Parthian, 2014). The unnamed characters, Ffresni and Cai, who appear in ‘Balm
-
of
-
Gilead' also occur in stories published in
Wales Arts Review's
‘Fiction Map of
Wales' and
Planet.

Jo
â
o Morais
won the 2013 Terry Hetherington Award for Young Writers, and was previously a runner
-
up in the 2009 Rhys Davies Short Story Award. He was also shortlisted for the Percy French Prize for Comic Verse. He is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. Check him out on twitter: @_JoaoMorais

Thomas Morris
is from Caerphilly. His debut story collection,
We Don't Know What We're Doing
, is published by Faber & Faber in August 2015. He lives in Dublin, where he is editor of
The Stinging Fly
.

Holly Müller
is a Cardiff
-
based writer and tutor of Creative Writing at the University of South Wales, where she achieved a first class degree in Creative and Professional Writing, was awarded the Michael Parnell prize for outstanding creative work, and is now undertaking a Creative Writing PhD. Her debut novel, a historical fiction set in post
-
war Austria, will be published with Bloomsbury in February 2016. Holly's short story ‘My Cousin's Gun' was published by Parthian Books (
Rarebit
2013).

Rachel Trezise
is a novelist, short
-
story writer and playwright from the Rhondda Valley. Her debut short fiction collection,
Fresh Apples,
won the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. Her second short fiction collection,
Cosmic Latte
, won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize Readers' Award in 2014.

The Editors

Francesca Rhydderch's
debut novel
The Rice Paper Diaries
was longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2014. She was also shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in the same year, and her stories have been widely published and broadcast on Radio 4. Other recent projects include a play in Welsh,
Cyfaill
, which was shortlisted in several categories for the Theatre Critics Wales Awards, including Best Playwright (Welsh
-
language). A former editor of literary journal
New Welsh Review
, she is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University.

Penny Thomas
has been fiction editor at Seren since 2007 and edited its ‘New Stories from the Mabinogion series'. She is co
-
founder of the xx women's writing festival and publisher with Firefly Press, a new children's and young
-
adult publisher based in Cardiff and Aberystwyth.

Seren is the book imprint of 
Poetry Wales Press Ltd

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

Facebook: facebook.com/SerenBooks

Twitter: @SerenBooks

Stories © the authors

Introduction © Francesca Rhydderch and Penny Thomas

ISBNs

978
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1
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78172
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234
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3 Pback

978
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1
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78172
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235
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0 Ebook

978
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1
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78172
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236
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7 Kindle

The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author's imagination. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The publisher works with the financial assistance of The Welsh Books Council