Carole Burns’s novel, The Same Country, was named a 2023 Best Welsh Fiction Book by Wales Arts Review. A freelancer for publications including  The Washington Post and LitHub. Burns was the winner of Ploughshares’ John C. Zacharis Award for The Missing Woman and Other Stories. She is Associate Professor in English at the University of Southampton and lives in Cardiff.

Jason Camilleri has over 25 years of experience working in the arts in Wales. Currently the Senior Manager for Platfform at Wales Millennium Centre, Jason has been a longstanding facilitator, and advocate for the use of Creative Writing, Lyricism, and Poetry, as forms of expression for the elevation of youth voice, and the voices of marginalised communities. As a performer and facilitator Jason uses poetic forms of lyricism to explore cultural identity within Wales and beyond.

Jason was behind the Wicked Words initiative publishing a collection of poems from school pupils who had been victims of bullying. His drive to provide creative, expressive opportunities are demonstrated as the founder of both Radio Platfform & Lock Off; the development of the Next Up programme, fusing lyricism, spoken word, and theatre, and also as lead on a current capital build project which aims to provide creative spaces for emerging artists. Through all creative projects Jason focuses on building a more culturally representative creative landscape, and the decolonisation of the arts in Wales.

Ned Thomas spent years in London journalism and teaching literature at the universities of Salamanca, Moscow and Aberystwyth before becoming Director of University of Wales Press. He was the founder and first editor of the magazine Planet and also established the Mercator Centre which today runs the Literature across Frontiers and Wales Literature Exchange programmes in which he retains a foothold. He has published critical studies of George Orwell, Derek Walcott and Waldo Williams. His The Welsh Extremist was influential in the Welsh-language campaigns of the late twentieth-century and his memoir Bydoedd (Worlds) won the Welsh-language Book of the Year Award in 2011.

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.

Eloise 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.

Menna Elfyn

Menna Elfyn is a enowned poet and playwright who has published fifteen volumes of poetry in both Welsh and English. Some of her most notable volumes include Perfect Blemish (2007), Murmur (2012 PBS Recommended Translation), Bondo (Bloodaxe Boolks, 2017), and Tosturi (Barddas, 2022) which was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. Her next volume Parch will be published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2025, and an Arabic volume of her poems entitled Caned Pobl y Byd will be published in February this year by H'mm Foundation.

Menna is the President of Wales PEN Cymru and the first Professor of Poetry in Wales, and Emerita Professor at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. She was also made Bardd Plant Cymru back in 2002.

Menna’s awards include Wales Book of the Year 1990 for her volume Aderyn Bach mewn Llaw; the Anima Intranza International Poetry Prize (2009) for her contribution to European poetry; and he was awarded the Chomondeley Award by the Society of Authors in 2022 for her significant contribution to poetry. Menna was also made a Fellow of the Royal Literary Society, the first Welsh-language poet to receive the honour in 2017.

She has travelled all over the world to read her work and her poetry has been translated into over twenty languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Lithuanian, Catalan, Hindi and others.

***

Gwenllian Ellis

Gwenllian Ellis is originally from Pwllheli but now lives in London. Her first book, Sgen I'm Syniad: Snogs, Secs, Sens was published by Y Lolfa in 2022 and won the People's Choice Award at the Wales Book of the Year Awards, 2023. She has already published her work in Cara and Barddas magazines, on the Hansh programme on S4C, with the National Eisteddfod and Frân Wen theatre company. She ‘ll publish her debut novel in 2025.

***

Dr Miriam Elin Jones

Dr Miriam Elin Jones is a lecturer and Head of the Welsh Department at Swansea University. Her area of research focuses on the development of Welsh-language science fiction. She is also a creative writer and playwright. She was part of Theatr Cymru’s [formerly Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru] New Playwrights Group 2018-9, and was one of the group of writers who established Cylchgrawn Y Stamp (Y Stamp magazine) in 2016. She was also shortlisted for Crime Cymru’s first Novel Award in 2022. She is originally from Llanpumsaint, in Carmarthenshire, but has now settled in the Vale of Glamorgan.

***

Hammad Rind

Hammad Rind is a writer and translator who works across several languages, including Welsh, Urdu, Persian, and English. His debut novel Four Dervishes (Seren Books, 2021) was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award. He translated Knotted Grief by Indian poet Naveen Kishore into Urdu (Zuka Books) as الجھا غم in 2022 and co-translated a collection of Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish's poems from Arabic into Welsh with Iestyn Tyne entitled Nodiadlyfr bach y wawr (2025, Y Stamp). Hammad has experience of working with children and young people in Wales. In 2021, he was commissioned to run a project called Morfil Trelluest, which used the arts, creative writing and painting – to benefit residents in Grangetown who are struggling with their mental health or feelings of belonging as members of diasporic communities. Hammad was also chosen to write short stories for young children which are featured on Stori Tic Toc (BBC Radio Cymru) called ‘Robin Be’ Bynnag’ and ‘Alina a Lleuad Eid’.