Members Committee

Catherine Merriman (Chair – English section)
Short-story writer, editor and novelist. Born in London and educated at Kent University, Canterbury. One-time statistician, women’s studies lecturer and environmental worker. Now tutor on the University of Glamorgan’s MPhil in Writing. Work published in New Welsh Review, Everywoman, Essentials, etc. and broadcast on Radio 4. Winner of British Book Award 1992 Ruth Hadden Memorial Award, and short-listed for Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Award 1992. Publications include Silly Mothers (Honno, 1991), Leaving the Light On (Gollancz/Macmillan, 1992) and Brotherhood (Parthian, 2003).

Damian Walford Davies (Chair - Welsh Section)
Poet, literary critic and editor. He is Reader in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, which he joined in 1997. He is the co-author of Whiteout (Parthian, 2006), and his first full collection, published by Seren – Suit of Lights – was a Wales Literature Exchange ‘Bookshelf’ choice for 2010. Alabaster Girls will appear from the same press in 2012. Damian’s fields of expertise include Romanticism, the interface between literature and politics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, twentieth-century poetry, and the two literatures of Wales. He is General Editor of The Oxford Literary History of Wales, and was one of the three judges of the 2008 Wales Book of the Year.

Gillian Clarke
Poet, writer, playwright, editor, translator (from Welsh), occasional broadcaster and current National Poet of Wales. President of Tŷ Newydd writers’ centre in Gwynedd, which she co–founded in 1990. Tutor on M.Phil studies course in Creative Writing, University of Glamorgan. Freelance tutor of creative writing. She is an Honorary fellow of Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Swansea Colleges of the University of Wales. Her most recent projects include Bioverse, poems for the Welsh National Botanical Gardens 1999-2000; The Blue Man (play for BBC Radio 4); and One Bright Morning, a translation of the Welsh novel Tegwch y Bore by Kate Roberts (Gomer, 2008).

Dafydd John Pritchard
Poet brought up in Nant Peris, Arfon. Educated at Dolbadarn Primary School Llanberis and Brynrefail School Llanrug. Studied at Trinity College Carmarthen and the University of Aberystwyth. He is an Assistant Archivist at the National  Screen and Sound Archive for Wales at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is a member of his local Welsh poetry team, Talwrn y Beirdd Y Cwps and the Ceredigion team. He won the Crown in the National Eisteddfod in Bro Dinefwr in 1996.

Ifor Thomas
Performance poet, Ifor was born in Pembrokeshire and now lives in Cardiff. He has won the John Tripp Award for spoken poetry and has been a prizewinner in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. Ifor has published a number of poetry collections including Giving Blood, Bogwiser, The Stuff of Love, Pubic (Red Sharks Press) and Unsafe Sex (Parthian, 1999). Body Beautiful (Parthian, 2005) was on the 2006 Wales Book of the Year Short List.

Aled Lewis Evans
Poet and writer in various media. Born in Machynlleth and now lives in Rhosllanerchrugog. His first volume of poetry was published by Barddas in 1989. He was a broadcaster on local radio (Sain y Gororau) from 1983–1993, then taught at Ysgol Morgan Llwyd, Wrexham. He has won prizes in the National Eisteddfod three times: in 1991 for his volume of poetry for young people, in 1998 for his monologue and in 1999 for his anthology of poetry for young people 12-14. His most recent volume of poetry, Dim Angen Creu Teledu Yma, was published in 2006.

Delyth George
Novelist and scriptwriter. Originally from Cefneithin in Carmarthenshire, she now lives in Cardiff and works as a writer for the television series, Pobol y Cwm. She published her first novel, Gwe o Gelwyddau, in 2006.

Cary Archard
Cary Archard was born in South Wales, close to Aberdare. The editor of Poetry Wales from 1980–86, and founder of Poetry Wales Press, he is the general editor of the uniform edition of Alun Lewis’s works. Until recently he taught English and Philosophy in Bridgend.

Matthew Jarvis
Having lived in Wales since 1994, Matthew Jarvis is currently the Anthony Dyson Fellow in Poetry at the University of Wales, Lampeter. A widely published essayist and reviewer, he specializes in the development of Welsh poetry in English since the 1960s. Matthew is particularly interested in environmental approaches to literature, focusing on the construction of Welsh space and place. He has recently published a number of major works on these subjects with the University of Wales Press, including Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry and An Introduction to Welsh Poetry in English, 1965-2005.

Dylan Foster Evans
Dylan Foster Evans's main research area is late-medieval literature. He is particularly interested in the work of the Poets of the Princes, Dafydd ap Gwilym and the Cywyddwyr up to the period of the Welsh renaissance. His work covers both textual and literary criticism, and he was one a team of editors which produced a ground-breaking digitial edition of the works of Dafydd ap Gwilym. Literary theory is another field of interest, and he has published on both post-colonial theory and ecocriticism. He also has written on contemporary poetry and was one of the adjudicators for the Crowning Competition in the Newport and District National Eisteddfod of 2004.

Kathryn Gray
Kathryn's poetry and criticism has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, and Poetry Wales amongst others. The Never–Never (Seren, 2004) was short–listed in 2004 for the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry: the first Welsh-born poet ever to be short-listed for the award. She became editor of New Welsh Review in 2008.

Luned Emyr
Dramatist and scriptwriter. Graduated in Theatre Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Luned won the Drama Medal at the Urdd National Eisteddfod in 1999, 2001 and 2003. In 2002, she studied at the European Film College in Denmark. She writes for theatre, screen and radio.

Tom Anderson
Tom  grew up in Porthcawl, and was led into a writing career through journeys taken as a surfer. He studied at the University of Glamorgan before becoming a private investigator for over three years with London House Services.  Tom’s main area of interest is travel, and he has written articles for New Welsh Review, Raconteur, DAPS Magazine, Planet, Wavelength, The Surfer’s Path, Fins Magazine, Tonnau Magazine, Cambria, the Times, the Western Mail, and many more.

  Belinda Bauer
Belinda was born in England and grew up there and in South Africa. She settled in Cardiff and has lived in Wales longer than anywhere else. She won the Carl Foreman Bafta for her first screenplay, 'The Locker Room' and went on to write 'Happy Now' starring Ioan Gruffudd and Emmy Rossum. Her first novel, Blacklands, was published in January 2010. Shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award in 2008, it was featured as one of 12 crime novels in Waterstones' Fresh Blood promotion. Blacklands won the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year 2010.