Winner: Overall Award & Creative Non-fiction Award
Sarn Helen, Tom Bullough (Granta Publications)
This is the account of Tom Bullough’s journey along Sarn Helen – Helen’s Causeway – the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north. As Bullough walks the route, he explores the political, cultural and mythical history of this small country that has been divided by language and geography. Woven into this journey are conversations with climate scientists and the story of Tom’s engagement with the urgent issue of the climate crisis, showing us its likely impact on Wales, which is – in miniature – a vision of what lies ahead for us all.
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Tom Bullough grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire, Wales, and lives in Bannau Brycheiniog with his children. He is the author of four novels – A (Sort Of Books), The Claude Glass (Sort Of Books), Konstantin (Penguin Books Ltd), and Addlands (Granta). Sarn Helen is his first work of nonfiction. Tom is a climate activist and a freelance tutor in creative writing, and runs regular courses on climate and writing for change.
Sarn Helen is illustrated by Jackie Morris.
Winner: The Poetry Award
Cowboy, Kandace Siobhan Walker (Cheerio Publishing)
The poems in Cowboy are knowing, millennial, internet-sick, funny, but there are deeper undercurrents, too: of embodied and disembodied spiritualities; of the knowledge of animals; of familial mythologies; of grief and longing; of autism and navigating diagnoses; of early and enduring disappointment; of the wildness underneath the smooth glass-and-chrome surfaces of contemporary life.
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Kandace Siobhan Walker, a writer and artist of Jamaican-Canadian, Saltwater Geechee and Welsh heritage, is also the author of Kaleido (Bad Betty Press). In 2021, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and the winner of The White Review Poet’s Prize. In 2019, she won the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize.
Winner: The Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award
The Unbroken Beauty of Rosalind Bone, Alex McCarthy (Doubleday)
Tucked into the Welsh valleys and encircled by silver birch and pine, the village of Cwmcysgod may appear a quiet, sleepy sort of place. But beneath the surface, tensions simmer, hearts ache, and painful truths threaten to emerge.
Sixteen-year-old Catrin Bone knows only what she has been told. Now, she is beginning to question her small world, and a version of the past that seems to entrap and embitter her reclusive mother, Mary.
The sins of the past are approaching, for it takes a village: to raise a child, to bring down a woman, to hide something monstrous and to look the other way.
In this tender, sly, exquisitely wrought novella, a unique cast of characters give voice to their versions of the truth. But it is the story of Rosalind Bone, of her strength and of all that she has endured, that rises above the rest, shimmering with hope and possibility…
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Alex McCarthy was born in Cardiff and grew up in south Wales. An alumna of London Contemporary Dance School, she worked as a dancer and choreographer for a number of years on stage, TV and film. In 2017, following a career change and several years of writing, Alex began to write this novel. She has a daughter and stepdaughter, and lives in Wales.
Winner: The Bute Energy Children & Young People Award
Skrimsli, Nicola Davies (Firefly Press)
Skrimsli is the second fantasy adventure from author Nicola Davies set in a world where animals and humans can sometimes share their thoughts. It traces the early life of Skrimsli, the tiger sea captain who, along with his friends, Owl and Kal, must escape the clutches of a tyrannical circus owner, then stop a war and save the ancient forest.
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Nicola Davies writes children’s non fiction and fiction about the natural world and our relationship with it. Also a zoologist, Nicola was one of the original presenters of the BBC children’s wildlife programme The Really Wild Show. She has been shortlisted for the Branford Boase and the Blue Peter Book Awards. Nicola lives in West Wales.
Skrimsli is illustrated by Jackie Morris.
Winner: Nation Cymru’s People’s Choice Award
In Orbit, Glyn Edwards (Seren)
On receiving news of a beloved teacher’s death, a man struggles with the loss of a relationship sustained by deep admiration and unrequited love. Memories of their shared journey are separated into three orbits where the man’s past, present, and future are punctuated by intense grief.
In Orbit uses a variety of innovative forms to explore loss, from traditional stanzas to prose poems to shaped poems in the form of birds, circuits, or hands. The narrative shifts in time, moving from his teen years to the present day when he himself has become a teacher, working alongside the man he mourns.
The book not only grieves the loss of the teacher, but also toxic standards for boys and men. Beyond human connection, sustenance is found in the moon, the stars, the sky, and nature. The discovery of a badger’s track or the treasure of a bird egg reminds us how small trajectories are in the context of the more-than-human: an answer perhaps to the grieving process.
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Glyn Edwards is a PhD researcher in ecopoetry at Bangor University. His first poetry collection, Vertebrae, was published by the Lonely Press. He edits Modron, a journal for environmental writing, and the Wild Words feature for North Wales Wildlife Trust. He is a former winner and trustee of the Terry Hetherington Award for Welsh young writers, and works as a teacher in North Wales.
In Orbit was shortlisted for the Poetry Award.