Seventeen writers, including three who are currently unpublished, have been awarded a Writer’s Bursary by the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency, Academi.
The bursaries which total £95,000 will allow the writers to take the time out of employment to write. As well as supporting new talent, bursaries have also been awarded to a number of established figures in the literary world. Fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction are all well-represented in the 2010 list.
Peter Finch, Chief Executive of Academi said: “When there is a recession writing flourishes. Academi’s popular bursaries scheme helps writers steer a way through difficult financial times. This year’s awards have been given to a mix of professional and newcomer, novelist and poet, short fictioneer and critic. The new literary works the bursaries buy will make a real difference to our culture.”
English language poetry in Wales will be particularly enriched with poets Damian Walford Davies, Tiffany Atkinson, Samantha Wynne Rhydderch and Ivy Alvarez all taking time out to work on new collections. Damian’s second poetry collection will explore art and life and the metaphysics of space flight, landscape and family history while fellow Aberystwyth University lecturer Tiffany Atkinson will explore literary heritage colliding with twenty-first century life and idiom. Samantha Wynne Rhydderch’s collection will delve into the rich history of the Welsh woollen industry, Lancashire’s cotton mills and witchcraft. Ivy’s collection will partly concentrate on the lives of ordinary people who might have lived in the relocated Welsh buildings at St Fagan’s National History Museum.
Christopher Lloyd switches from writing travel guidebooks to fiction. An Academi bursary will allow him to research his first crime novel set in Girona. Jim Bowen will take some time out from farming to write a novel about disability, courage and care. New writer Ann McManus will work on her first collection of short stories.
Byron Rogers, winner of the James Tait Black prize for his biography of R S Thomas, will write a literary memoir, revisiting Welsh locations and subjects of his previously published essays. Alex Keegan will switch from writing short stories and crime novels to concentrate on researching his mother’s biography and her possible involvement in the Profumo scandal in the 1960s. Jane MacNamee’s research and writing will take her along the coastline of Wales to work on essays about landscape, locations and characters.
The Welsh-language recipients are poets Dafydd John Pritchard and Karen Owen, novelists Daniel Davies and Robat Gruffudd, short story writer Dafydd Apolloni and literary critic Euros Lewis. Eiry Miles has been awarded a New Writer’s Bursary.
Gwen Davies, Chair of the Academi Bursaries Panel commented: “I am delighted that priorities this year have meant an avoidance of capping. This has enabled us to make awards that are as close possible to the writers’ requirements in the case of 17 well-deserved applicants.”
