Catrin Kean’s first novel Salt won the 2021 Rhys Davies Fiction award, the Wales Arts Review People’s Choice Award, and the overall Wales Book of the Year Award. Catrin will join us at Penarth Yacht club to celebrate the publication of her second novel Lace, the sequel to her award-winning debut.

Lace:
In the early 1900s in Wicklow, Ireland, the lives of six year old Mary and her siblings are torn apart when their father dies leaving the family penniless. Mary’s mother is forced to travel to Dublin to find work. She places her children in an orphanage for a short stay, which turns into
years.

Many years later Mary settles in Cardiff with her Welsh/Bajan husband Louis, and is thrilled at the arrival of their first child, Teresa. But the birth of the baby dredges up long hidden memories that Mary must confront before she can bond with her daughter.

Catrin Kean was awarded a place on the Hay Festival Writers At Work scheme for emerging writers from 2016 – 18. Her short stories have
been published in Riptide Journal, Bridge House Anthologies, The Ghastling, and Syncopation Journal. She lives in the Garw Valley with her partner and three ridgeback dogs.