Being a Writer in Wales

Literature Wales - Who We Are and What We Do

Literature Walesn runs events, courses, competitions, including the Cardiff International Poetry Competition, with the support of Cardiff Council and offering a First Prize of £5000, conferences, tours by authors, lectures, international exchanges, events for schools, readings, literary performances and festivals. Literature Wales is also responsible for the National Poet of Wales project.
 

Opportunities for Writers

Bursaries, mentoring and other services. Literature Wales has taken over from the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) responsibility for Services to Writers and now offers financial bursaries, critical advice and mentoring. On this site writers can view listings of publishers, a directory of writers’ groups, organisations of interest to authors and advice on literary agents and the business of authorship.

Wales Book of the Year

The Wales Book of the Year prize is awarded to the best book in Welsh and the best book in English. The authors each receive £10,000. The 2009 winners – Deborah Kay Davies for Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful (Parthian) and William Owen Roberts for Petrograd (Cyhoeddiadau Barddas) - were announced at a glittering ceremony at St David's Hotel, Cardiff Bay on 15 June 2009.

Who is Literature Wales for?

Literature Wales represents the interests of Welsh writers (poets, novelists, fictioneers, storytellers, dramatists, critics) and Welsh writing both inside Wales and beyond. It works in partnership with Tŷ Newydd, the Cricieth-based residential writers’ centre and with the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea. In 2005 it opened its resource centre for writers at the new Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay - Glyn Jones Centre - in memory of the late author and poet.

In 1998 Llenyddiaeth Cymru won the franchise from ACW to establish a Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency. It is now responsible for funding events across Wales under the Writers on Tour scheme - which includes a range of writers’ residencies, development projects, Young People’s Writing Squads - as well as offering support to those organising literary programmes of their own. To carry out this work Literature Wales has offices in Cardiff and fieldworkers based in North and West Wales.

Literature Wales' publishing programme includes:

A470, a bi-monthly literature information magazine for the whole of Wales, Taliesin, a quarterly literary journal in the Welsh language, The New Welsh Review, Wales’s leading literary journal in the English language (in partnership with the Universities of Wales Association), The Companion to the Literature of Wales, The Welsh Academy English-Welsh Dictionary, and a variety of translated works. With support from the Lottery, the Society published the first Encyclopaedia of Wales, which appeared in both English and Welsh in 2007.

Information on all these ventures and services can be found on this web site.

If you need further information or advice or have suggestions for new ways in which Literature Wales could work then please get in touch: 029 2047 2266 / post@academi.org.