The Writers of Wales Database

WILLIAMS, NIA

Website: www.niawilliams.com
Publisher website: www.honno.co.uk; www.serenbooks.com 

Nia was born in 1961 in Cardiff, to a Welsh-speaking family. She and her partner, a university lecturer, have lived in Oxford since 2000. After gaining a First in History at the University of Exeter, Nia trained as a print and radio journalist. She’s written for several magazines on subjects ranging from dentistry to gipsy communities, and has produced features for the BBC World Service programme ‘Business Matters’ and LBC’s ‘Family Money’.

Since 1987 Nia has worked as a freelance writer and musician - two areas that often overlap. Her writing includes novels, musicals, opera libretti, short stories and lyrics. She has also written a guide to Normandy (AA Publishing) and contributed features and articles to many non-fiction books covering travel and history. When wearing her musician’s hat, Nia composes and arranges music and works as an accompanist, keyboard player, teacher and repetiteur. She has accompanied classical singers in venues including the Royal Opera House and St Martin-in-the-Fields, and has staged several productions in local theatres and performance spaces. Work that combines her musical and literary interests include a piece for children’s choir based on Ancient Greek myths; a stage musical about the industrial revolution (workshopped at the Royal Academy of Music); a jazz musical about internet dating and a musical for three voices, which is available on CD.

Nia is the author of three novels: The Pier Glass (Honno 2001); Persons Living or Dead (Honno 2005) which was longlisted for the Wales Book of the Year in 2006; and The Colour of Grass (Seren Books 2011). Her short stories have been published in several anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Wales and translated into Czech. She is a Member of the Welsh Academy.

Recurring themes in Nia’s fiction are:
Individual and social histories and the way they’re manipulated and revised;
family relationships;
theatre and cinema and their impact on day-to-daylife;
emotions and obsessions that lie under the surface; and
the identities we invent for ourselves and the way they’re jettisoned or changed.

The photograph of Nia is copyrighted to Marc Brome

Reviews:

”…stylish, intelligent and lucid…”
Stevie Davies, New Welsh Review

“…an elegantly written, confident appearance by a writer who already knows how to turn words into a world.”
Jon Gower, Welsh Books Council

“…astonishing in its masterly use of clever plotting and the interleaving of past and present … a most accomplished novel”
Meic Stephens, The Western Mail

“… impressively assured, many-layered and thought-provoking”
Sue Morgan, Planet

“… succeeds in generating real sympathy and involvement…”
Robert Nisbet, Cambrensis

“… poetic and sometimes brutally graphic…”
Richard Poole, Welsh Books Council


Selected Publications:
The Pier Glass (Honno, 2001)
Persons Living or Dead (Honno, 2005)
The Colour of Grass (Seren, 2011)

Contributed to:
Tilting at Windmills (contributor) (Parthian, 1995)
Power (contributor) (Honno, 1998)
Mama’s Baby (Papa’s Maybe) (contributor) (Parthian, 1999)
Catwomen from Hell (contributor) (Honno, 2000)
The Woman who Loved Cucumbers (contributor) (Honno, 2002)
Mirror, Mirror (contributor) (Honno, 2004)
The Big Book of Cardiff (contributor) (Seren, 2005)