Mentors of previous rounds

Ishmahil Blagrove is a writer and filmmaker and works for Rice N Peas, a social justice advocacy. He is the author of Carnival — A Photographic and Testimonial History of the Notting Hill Carnival (Rice N Peas, 2014). He describes the shift in his philosophy from “black power” to an internationalist perspective advocating solidarity within diverse groups.

"Mentoring provides step by step support for new writers and helps build confidence."

Tom Bullough is the author of four novels – most recently Addlands, a story of seventy years on a Radnorshire hill farm, which, among other plaudits, was the subject of a sermon in Westminster Abbey. His work has been translated into nine languages. Tom's first non-fiction book, Sarn Helen: a Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future (with illustrations by Jackie Morris) will be published by Granta in February 2023. Tom grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire and now lives in the Brecon Beacons.

http://www.tombullough.com/

Rhian Edwards is a multi-award-winning poet and poetry editor for Seren Books.  

Rhian’s first collection of poems Clueless Dogs (Seren 2012) won the hat trick of prizes at Wales Book of the Year 2013 - the poetry category, People's Choice Award, and the main Book of the Year prize. It was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2012.   

Rhian’s second full collection The Estate Agent’s Daughter (Seren 2020) was a National Poetry Day Recommended Read for 2020. 

Rhian has published two pamphlets of poems: Parade the Fib (Tall-Lighthouse 2008), which was awarded the Poetry Book Society Choice for autumn 2008 and Brood (Seren 2017), an illustrated pamphlet of bird poems.  

Rhian is also the last winner of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry, winning both the Judges and Audience award.   

Rhian’s poems have appeared in The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, New Statesman, Spectator, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Arete, London Magazine, Stand, Planet and New Welsh Review.  

Twitter: @RhianEdwards5

https://www.rhianedwards.co.uk/

Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright, performer, graphic artist and designer. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and facilitates workshops in creative writing where he explores reoccurring themes in his work - identity, displacement, and destiny - in accessible and enjoyable ways for participants of all ages and backgrounds. His awards include: Edinburgh Fringe First Award 2009, The Liberty Human Rights Award, The Live Canon International Poetry Prize, The Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition, Magma Poetry Competition, Winchester Poetry Prize, A Black British Theatre Award and The Hay Festival Medal for Poetry. He’s published half a dozen poetry books and has been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Tate Modern, Louis Vuitton, BBC Radio & Television.

"This programme can build patterns of work and ways of thinking, in turn expanding and re-thinking what it is to write and belong to a community."

Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has now lived in mid Wales for a quarter of a century. Niall has published eight novels, also poetry, memoirs, non-fiction, travelogues. Twice winner of Wales Book of the Year Award. Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Wolverhampton, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His work has been translated into twenty languages and he has given public readings of his work on every continent on the planet (excepting Antarctica).  

https://www.niallgriffiths.com/

Philip Gross, born in Cornwall, son of an Estonian wartime refugee, has lived in south Wales since 2004. The Water Table won the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009, and Love Songs of Carbon the Roland Mathias Award (Wales Book of The Year) 2016, and he received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. He is a keen collaborator – e.g. with artist Valerie Coffin Price on A Fold In The River (Seren, 2015), with poet Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (Mulfran, 2018) and with scientists on Dark Sky Park (Otter-Barry, 2018). He has published some twenty collections of poetry, most recently, Between The Islands (Bloodaxe, 2020) and Troeon/Turnings (Seren, 2021) a 'translaboration' – mutual translations/responses – with Welsh language poet Cyril Jones. A new Bloodaxe collection, The Thirteenth Angel, is published in November 2022. Several collaborations are under way meanwhile.

Twitter: @philipgrossuk

www.philipgross.co.uk

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma was the winner of the Scottish First Book Award while also being shortlisted for the Southbank Sky Arts Literature Award, Guardian First Book Award, Green Carnation Prize, Author’s Club First Novel Prize and the Polari First Book Award. Kerry’s second novel, Thirst won France’s prestigious award for foreign fiction the Prix Femina Étranger and was shortlisted for the European Premio Strega in Italy. 

Her latest book and memoir, Lowborn, takes her back to the towns of her childhood as she investigates her own past. It was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Guardian and Independent Book of the Year. It was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Portico Prize and shortlisted in the National Book Token, Books Are My Bag Reader’s Awards and the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Kerry was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020. 

Twitter: @THATKERRYHUDSON

https://kerryhudson.co.uk/

Cynan Jones is an acclaimed fiction writer from the west coast of Wales. His work has appeared in over twenty countries, and in journals and magazines including Granta and The New Yorker. He has also written a screenplay for the hit crime drama Hinterland, a collection of tales for children, and a number of stories for BBC Radio. He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous awards, and won, among other prizes, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award, and the BBC National Short Story Award.  

Twitter: @cynan1975

https://www.cynanjones.com/

Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer for adults and children. Her books for young adults have won many prizes including the YA Prize, the Waterstones Prize for Older Children's Fiction, the Crimefest YA Prize twice and the inaugural Jhalak Prize for Children and Young People. Her debut picture book, Granny Came Here on the Empire Windrush has been shortlisted for Indie Book Awards.  She was awarded an MBE for literature in June 2021. 

Twitter: @LawrencePatrice

Sophie Mackintosh was born in Wales and currently lives in London. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, and The White Review, among others. Her first novel, The Water Cure, was nominated for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, and her second novel, Blue Ticket, was published in 2020. Her third novel, Cursed Bread, will be published in 2023. 

Twitter: @fairfairisles

https://www.sophiemackintosh.co.uk/  

Rufus Mufasa is a pioneering participatory artist, literary activist, poet, rapper, singer songwriter, theatre maker, and last but not least, Mother.

From Barbican Fellow to the first Future Generations Act Poet in Residence, Rufus also works internationally, securing literary residencies from Hay Literature Festival to Sweden, Finland, Indonesia, and most recently Zimbabwe, but always returns to People Speak Up in Llanelli, Wales, promoting hip hop education, performance poetry and intergenerational development, and was appointed their Poet on Prescription 2021. A Hull '19 artist in conjunction with BBC Contains Strong Language, Flashbacks and Flowers is her debut collection, published by Indigo Dreams, awarded for their innovation in publishing, and also released a second solo album in 2021. Rufus' work explores motherhood, the spirituality of ancestry, class, climate chaos, transgenerational trauma, the divine & the domestic, feminism & faith. 

Twitter: @rufusmufasa

https://www.rufusmufasa.com/

Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry in 1966 but spent his early years in Cornwall before returning to Wales. He started writing at a very early age (inspired by his dad taking him to see Goldfinger at the cinema) but eventually decided to pursue science as a career, working in astronomy and astrophysics, a career that took him to the Netherlands for nearly twenty years. He and his wife returned to Wales in 2008. He has written twenty novels and around a hundred short stories, and his fiction has been adapted for stage and television. His science fiction novel Terminal World (Gollancz) was a Wales Book of the Year shortlisted title in 2011.

"For Sc-Fi to remain vital, it needs to welcome under-represented voices. This process is happening around the world and there is no reason for Wales not to play its part in this exciting new wave, with young, talented and ambitious writers such as Daniel Howell coming to the fore."

Jacob Ross is a writer, tutor, mentor, and Associate Fiction Editor for Fiction at Peepal Tree Press – a leading independent publisher of Caribbean, African and Asian related fiction in the United Kingdom. He has been a Judge for numerous prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Short Prize the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize, the VS Pritchett and Tom Gallon prizes. 

An established tutor of Narrative Craft, Jacob Ross runs numerous Creative Writing workshops in the UK and abroad. His fiction has earned numerous prizes and awards, the most recent — being listed on the UK Queen’s Jubilee list of top commonwealth works of fiction over the last decade. 

Jacob Ross is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

Twitter: @rosswriterj

Peter Scalpello is a queer poet and therapist from Glasgow. Their work has appeared in Five Dials, Granta, and The London Magazine, among other publications. Their debut poetry collection, Limbic, is published by Cipher Press. 

Twitter: @p_scalpello

Katherine Stansfield is a multi-genre novelist and poet. Her historical crime series Cornish Mysteries has won the Holyer an Gof Fiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Winston Graham Memorial Prize. The most recent instalment is The Mermaid's Call. She co-writes a fantasy crime trilogy with her partner David Towsey, publishing as D. K. Fields, and has also published two full length poetry collections and a pamphlet with Seren. Katherine is co-editor, with Caroline Oakley, of Cast a Long Shadow: new crime short stories by women writers from Wales, published by Honno. She teaches creative writing for a number of universities and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. In 2021, along with fellow members of Crime Cymru – the Welsh crime writers’ collective – Katherine launched a new prize for debut crime writers in Wales.  

Twitter: @K_Stansfield

http://katherinestansfield.blogspot.com/

Rachel Trezise is a novelist and playwright from the Rhondda Valley. Her debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won a place on the Orange Futures List in 2002. In 2006 her first short fiction collection Fresh Apples won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second short fiction collection Cosmic Latte won the Edge Hill Prize Readers Award in 2014. Her most recent play ‘Cotton Fingers’ toured Ireland and Wales and won the Summerhall Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019. Her most recent novel, Easy Meat came out in 2021. 

Twitter: @RachelTrezise

Eloise Williams was the inaugural Children’s Laureate Wales 2019-2021, an initiative run by Literature Wales. 

Having originally trained in Theatre at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, she went on to work as an actor, theatre maker and creative practitioner for over a decade before gaining a Masters Degree in Creative and Media Writing with Distinction, at Swansea University, 2011. She has since published Elen’s Island, Gaslight, Seaglass, and Wilde with Firefly Press, The Tide Singer with Barrington Stoke, and The Mab – a retelling of the stories of The Mabinogi, with Unbound. 

Twitter: @Eloisejwilliams

https://eloisewilliams.com/