Writing Fiction: The Cohort

A Saldanha is a writer and translator, whose work has mostly focused on the Arab world and South Asia. Her articles and essays have appeared in publications in Bahrain, India, Lebanon, Pakistan, the UAE and the USA, and her literary translations from Arabic have appeared in Words Without Borders, Two Lines, and in anthologies published by IB Tauris, Ithaca Press and Zed Books. She has a particular interest in the history of South Asians in the Gulf, and of Gulf Arabs in South Asia, and the stories she is currently working on explore those histories.

Amy Grandvoinet lives in Aberystwyth and is currently negotiating a monographical PhD study in so-called literary psychogeographies. She’s a member of the Situationist International Research Network and co-founder of think.material Press, and enjoys investigating representations of socio-complex spaces (tracked at her website amygrandvoi.net and Going About, Baby blog). At the moment she is collaborating on cultural exorcism with la Museo del Camminare Venezia and teaching autoethnographic writing at Liverpool John Moores University.

Anest Williams is an author from Dyffryn Nantlle, now based in Cardiff. She studied English language and linguistics in Glasgow, which is where she became involved in student journalism. Her experience as a queer woman in Wales was published in the bilingual anthology Cymry. Balch. Ifanc (Rily, 2024). She spends most of her time reading, walking, or going down Wikipedia rabbit holes. She currently works as a social researcher and lives with her partner and their greyhound, Malwen.

Kaja is an award-winning writer, journalist and intersectional activist. Kaja’s writing has been published in a variety of respected magazines such as Atmos, Refinery 29, Diva Magazine and The Welsh Agenda. She also has an essay published in the book Rife: 21 Stories from Britain’s Youth ed. Nikesh Shukla. Kaja was awarded the 2024 WLCOW Young Artist Award for her creative work. In March 2025 Kaja was chosen as Disability Arts Cymru’s Artist of the Month. From August 2024 – August 2025 Kaja was the interim Reviews Editor for Poetry Wales. She now works as the Marketing Associate for Folding Rock magazine.

Kaja explores themes of social justice, disability, mental health, LGBT+ life and environmentalism in her writing. She is currently working on a fantasy manuscript which encompasses these elements in a Nordic setting.

Holly Müller is a writer and musician living in Bannau Brycheiniog. Her short stories are published in Rarebit (Parthian Books, 2013) and New Welsh Fiction (Seren Books, 2015). Her debut novel My Own Dear Brother (Bloomsbury, 2016) was Waterstones’ Book of the Month and garnered positive reviews in The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Times, Sydney Morning Herald and more. Holly achieved a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales where she taught undergraduates. Holly has written for national press as well as prominent online publications and has performed at Cheltenham, Hay, Laugharne, and Cardiff Literature Festivals.

Jason (They/them) is a proud non-binary queer writer from Cardiff. They have worked in a number of creative roles including as a set designer, travelling exhibition coordinator, Bookshop Manager and Art Department Coordinator. When Jason isn’t writing, or working in the library, they can usually be found reading, painting, baking or walking the dog with their partner.

Mason Lloyd (he/him), a writer of fiction and poetry, is from the south Wales valleys and is now based in Cardiff. The first of his family to go to university, he studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. His poetry, and a writer’s interview has been published in Poetry Wales. He is currently working on a debut novel about the Welsh comprehensives during the 2000s as well as a collection of short stories that draws on his Welsh and Irish background. Preoccupations of his writing include nature, madness, class, Greece, queerness, history, and the nature of our contemporary condition.

Matt Roberts is a writer from the valleys of south Wales. Matt has recently been shortlisted for the Ink Of Ages Fiction Prize and has been published in Writers Magazine, Nursing Times and the British Journal of Nursing.

Photo: Jess Gough

Naomi Pearce is a writer living in Ceredigion. Her fiction, criticism and biography explores death, desire and not belonging and has appeared in Art Monthly, Happy Hypocrite, e-flux Criticism and The White Review, amongst others. In 2023, she published her debut novel, Innominate, with MOIST books, described by Iain Sinclair as “a classic of local archaeology”. Her writing on embodied archival practice is included in Gestures: A Body of Work, Manchester University Press and British Art Studies issue ‘Queer Art in Britain Since the 1980s’, both 2025. She teaches interdisciplinary practice at Aberystwyth University.

Pete Evans is a writer and tour guide based in north-east Wales. He is the author of two river books: Resurrection River on the Alun and The Holy Dee. In July, he won the 2025 Chesire Prize for Literature- Flash Fiction Category. His Welsh-Romany roots have instilled in him a love of storytelling which he utilises to guide tourists around north Wales and Chester.

Shazz is a writer from Ynys Môn. When her career collapsed she focused on her writing, first completing a creative writing course with the Open University. Since then, she’s completed several online courses ranging from Undergraduate to Master's level study with Oxford University, Arvon Foundation, Raw Writing and Adult Learning Wales. She is currently writing her memoir detailing life as a solo woman backpacker with multiple health challenges. Her novel-in-progress examines themes of widowing, with an abyss-black sense of humour. She is a 2025 winner of the JKP writing prize.

Theo Malings (she/her/hi) is an Anglo-Welsh writer. Her Upmarket fiction has been shortlisted for the First Novel Prize, her creative non-fiction longlisted for the Creative Futures Prize, her short fiction published in The People’s Friend, and her YA SFF Thriller won the Faber ACTION! Prize and will be published by Faber in 2027. She is working on a literary speculative novel that considers the subtle violence of the ’heteronormal‘ society and the role women are allowed to play in men’s stories. She is easily distracted but enjoys an overlarge cross-stitch.

Soma Ghosh is a bilingual British-Indian-Bengali writer whose fiction, non-fiction and cultural criticism explores race, sexuality, place and gender. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Quietus, Little White Lies, The Irish Times and others. Based near Y Gelli/Hay-on-Wye, she has read her stories at the Hay Festival. In 2025 she was commissioned by the National Library of Wales and Inclusive Journalism Cymru to create an LGBTQ-inclusive, multicultural podcast on trees that was a ‘Guardian Best Podcast’. The recipient of a Wellcome People’s Award for theatre, she has written and performed drama and comedy across UK arts festivals.