Sgwennu’n Well | Writing Well 2025-2026: Mentors

Dr Sanah Ahsan is a poet, liberation psychologist and educator. Their work draws on therapeutics, embodiment and poetics as life-affirming practices. Some of Sanah’s media work includes writing for The Guardian and presenting a Channel 4 documentary on the over-medicalisation of people’s distress. As a poet, Sanah has won the Outspoken Poetry Performance Prize, shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, White Review Poetry Prize and Bridport Poetry Prize. Sanah’s debut poetry collection I cannot be good until You say it (Bloomsbury March 2024), is a meditation on Islam, queerness and goodness. It has been shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and selected as one of The Guardian’s Best Poetry books. 

Eloise Williams is an award-winning author of books for young people. Gaslight, Seaglass, Elen’s Island, Wilde, Honesty & Lies, all with Firefly Press. The Tide Singer and The Curio Collectors with Barrington Stoke. She was a writer and co-editor of The Mab, a vibrant retelling of the stories of The Mabinogi published by Unbound.

She has an MA in Creative Writing from Swansea University, was selected to be a participant in the prestigious Hay Writers at Work Programme and was the inaugural Children’s Laureate Wales 2019-2021.

Having grown up opposite a library in Llantrisant, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Eloise now lives in an old cottage in Pembrokeshire where she collects sea glass and ghost stories and sings Welsh songs out loud on the beach.

Alex Wharton is an award-winning poet, writer, author and performer and the Children’s Laureate Wales 2023 – 2025. His first collection of poetry, Daydreams and Jellybeans (Firefly Press, 2020), was shortlisted for the Lollies laugh-out-loud poetry Award and the Wales Children’s Book of the Year. His second collection, Doughnuts, Thieves and Chimpanzees (Firefly Press, 2023), a lively ‘how to’ of poetry, rap, haiku and more, is nominated for the Yoto Carnegie Medal 2025. His third collection Red Sky at Night, Poet’s Delight was followed up exactly a year later in the mysterious, humorous, philosophical and charming companion volume Red Sky in the morning, Poets’ Warning both illustrated by Ian Morris.

www.alexwhartonpoet.co.uk

https://www.instagram.com/alexwharton_/

https://x.com/alexwhartonpoet

Helen McSherry is a Belfast poet living in Cardiff. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Mairtin Crawford Award, and awarded 2nd place in Hammond House Prize. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as Poetry Wales and London Grip, as well as anthologies in Britain and Ireland. Helen facilitates writing-for-wellbeing groups and was selected for the 2024 Literature Wales Writing Well Programme. Helen has worked with mental health organisations facilitating groups. She has also gained qualifications, including a Foundation Certificate in Psychotherapy and Counselling from Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling.

https://www.instagram.com/helenmcsherrypoet/

Siân Melangell Dafydd is the author of Y Trydydd Peth (Gomer, 2009), which won the Rhetorical Medal at the 2009 National Eisteddfod, Filò (Gomer, 2019) and a novel, A ir Dæaar ar Ddim (Yhoieddiad r Stamp, 2023). She published a collection of poetry together with Anitha Thampi from Kerala, India, in 2018: Dŵr Allall / A Different Water (Poetrywala).  She is the nature columnist of the Four Winds, she was co-editor of the literary magazine, Taliesin.  Siân is a yoga teacher, makes herbal medicines and treatments for her family and spins wool. In 2024, a research project called Coel Gwrach began to discuss the history of witches in Wales.   She works as a Creative Writing lecturer at The American University of Paris but lives at the foot of the Berwyn. 

clare e. potter loves poetry in the woods, by the ash tree. She facilitates creative wellbeing workshops about nature connecting, motivated by the belief that poetry can be a force for personal and social change. She presents radio (The Poet’s Poet is nominated for a Celtic Media Award); she directed a BBC documentary (The Wall and the Mirror) about her village barber, thereafter a group formed to save the local miners’ institute; she’s translated for the National Poet of Wales, was a Hay Festival Writer at Work and is this year’s Royal Society of Literature/Jerwood Poetry Award winner for Cymru. Her Cymraeg pamphlet Nôl Iaith (Cyhoeddiadau'r Stamp 2025) follows new collection Healing the Pack (Verve Poetry Press 2024). She was a participant in the Llif European languages retreat as an ambassador for the Welsh language.