The Writers of Wales Database

MURRAY, TIFFANY

Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, FH106, Fforest Hall, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL

Tiffany is the author of the recently published Diamond Star Halo (Portobello Books, 2010) and Happy Accidents (HarperPerennial, 2005), both of which were short-listed for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. She is a graduate of UEA’s M.A. fiction programme and is currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Glamorgan, having taught previously at UEA, Bath and Manchester Universities. Tiffany’s short fiction has appeared in Pretext, Mslexia, and New Welsh Review. She has worked as an editor (Pretext 8 with Helon Habila), and conducts writing courses for The Taliesen Trust and The Arvon Foundation. She was brought up in Monmouthshire and Powys and now lives in the Welsh Marches.

Reviews:
With respect to Happy Accidents (HarperPerennial, 2005)

"…Inventive, funny and affecting, powerful without being mawkish…"
Daily Mail


Selected Publications:
Happy Accidents (HarperPerennial, 2005)
Diamond Star Halo (Portobello Books, 2010)

Contributed to:
Pretext ’8’: Once Upon a Time… (co–editor) (Pen and Inc Press, 2003)
Under Surveillance (co-editor) (Bluechrome, 2008)



Diamond Star Halo (Portobello Books, 2010)

Halo Llewelyn's prayers begin, Dear God and Otis Redding, because she lives at Rockfarm, a rural recording studio where the sound of tractors and Stratocasters battle. One midsummer night an American band called Tequila arrives in a beautiful silver bus, and when they and that summer are gone, they leave behind an equally beautiful baby boy; they leave Fred. Fred is everybody's favourite, a golden child, and Halo adores him. By seventeen his ambition has propelled him out into the word and into the stardom that was always his destiny. Yet up on stage, being screamed at by hundred of teenage girls and boys, Fred will always turn his spotlight on Halo in the crowd. That's the problem with falling in love with your charismatic almost-brother: it can never be a secret. In the end, the whole world has to know. A seductive story of fate, magic, and rock 'n' roll, "Diamond Star Halo" shows what happens when a family and a farm become the breeding ground for fame.  

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