Mentee: Grace Quantock

Stephanie Butland's first two books were memoirs of her dance with cancer. She then moved to fiction and has written seven novels, including beloved bookshop tales Lost For Words and Found In A Bookshop. Stephanie works with writers at all stages of their careers as a mentor and editor. She lives in Northumberland with her husband and Harris the greyhound.

Website: https://www.stephaniebutlandauthor.com/

X: @under_blue_sky

Instagram: @stephaniebutlandauthor

Mentee: Ed Garland

Deborah Kay Davies lives in Cardiff. She has a Ph.D. in Creative and Critical Writing.

Deborah’s first book was a collection of poems, Things You Think I Don’t Know (Parthian Books).
Her first collection of stories, Grace, Tamar And Laszlo The Beautiful (Parthian Books) won the 2009 Wales Book of the Year award.

After her debut novel, True Things About Me (Canongate Books 2010) was published, she was named one of the best new British novelists on BBC TV’s Culture Show. When Faber and Faber brought the novel out in the USA, Lionel Shriver made it her personal Book of the Year.

Deborah’s second novel, Reasons She Goes To The Woods (Oneworld 2014) was shortlisted for The Encore Award and longlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction. Tirzah And The Prince Of Crows was published by Oneworld in 2019.
In 2022 True Things About Me was released as a BBC feature film called True Things starring Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke.

Mentee: Natasha Gauthier

Damian Walford Davies is a poet, writer and librettist, born in Aberystwyth in 1971. He is the author of 5 collections from Seren: Suit of Lights (2009), Witch (2012), Judas (2015), Docklands (2019) and Viva Bartali! (2023), together with the pamphlet Alabaster Girls (Rack Press, 2015). He writes creatively and critically in both English and Welsh. His academic interests and creative methods intermix: informed by deep histories of place, cartography and psychogeography, his work to date explores historical terror and trauma, marginalised voices and gaps in the record – particularly through the use of the single-voice perspective of the dramatic monologue.

He is Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Cardiff University. He served as Chair of Literature Wales from 2012 to 2018, and from 2015 to 2018 was Chair of the Board of Cardiff University Press.

https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/walforddaviesd

Mentee: Rudy Harries

Rachel Dawson is from Swansea and lives in Cardiff. In 2020 Rachel was awarded a New Writer's Bursary from Literature Wales, and she was mentored by Rebecca F. John. Neon Roses, her debut novel, was published by John Murray Press in 2023. Neon Roses is a lesbian love story set against the backdrop of the politically and culturally turbulent 1980s. Neon Roses was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize and Wales Book of The Year, and has been longlisted for the Polari Prize for queer writing. Rachel works in communications for a theatre company, tutors in Creative Writing at the Cardiff University School of Lifelong Learning, and is a Non-Executive Director at Seren Books. She is currently working on a second novel exploring queer parenthood and a love for history.  

https://racheldawson.cymru/

Instagram: @racheldawsonwrites

X: @RachelCDawson

Mentee: Heledd Melangell

Dilar Dirik was born in Antakya and grew up in Offenbach am Main. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. Her book The Kurdish Women’s Movement: History, Theory, Practice was published with Pluto Press in 2022. It is an in-depth ethnography of the revolutionary Kurdish women's liberation struggle. From 2019-2023, Dirik worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. She authored numerous book chapters and articles on various topics, focusing on women's struggles. Her writing has been translated into several languages. Dirik has left academia and currently focuses on political education. 

Mentee: Aliyy Azad Malik

Eliot Duncan is a writer and editor from the American Midwest. His first book, Ponyboy (Norton, Footnote) is the first book with a trans protagonist to be nominated for the National Book Awards in the United States. He loves you in every tense. 

https://www.eliotduncan.com/

Instagram: @semantic_rush

Mentee: Tia-zakura Camilleri

Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of: The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry and Film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon & Methuen. 

Website: https://www.inuaellams.com/
Threads: @inuaellams
Instagram: @inuaellams

Mentee: Lowri Morgan

Dr Jenni Fagan is a critically acclaimed, award-winning, novelist, poet, screenwriter and artist. They are published in nine languages, with five fiction novels, seven poetry collections, one non-fiction memoir that explores their life growing up in local authority care. As a writer they have worked with vulnerable groups including women in prison. Fagan is a Dr. of Philosophy whose speciality is structuralism and the consideration of how wider societal structures impact on the individual. Fagan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of Liberty.

Mentee: Lesley James

Glyn Maxwell grew up in Hertfordshire, England, but has primarily Welsh heritage. His mother Buddug-Mair Powell acted in the original productions of Under Milk Wood. All his poetry collections have been shortlisted for the major UK poetry prizes, most recently the T. S. Eliot Prize for How The Hell Are You. The Nerve won the Geoffrey Faber Prize. His latest, The Big Calls, is a protest at recent UK government – the UK’s Covid response, the treatment of migrants, Afghanistan, Grenfell Tower, in the forms of Tennyson, Kipling, Rossetti, Oscar Wilde. He has recently published an amplification of his popular guidebook On Poetry, called Silly Games To Save The World, a book about poetry, psychology, politics and philosophy, which can be read for free on Substack. His plays have been widely staged in the UK and USA. He is Head of Studies on the MA at The Poetry School.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PoetGlynMaxwell/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyn_Maxwell
https://glynmaxwellgmailcom.substack.com/

Mentee: Heledd Melangell

Grug Muse is a poet and essayist from Dyffryn Nantlle. Her most recent book, merch y llyn, won the Welsh-language poetry category in Wales Book of the Year Award 2022. She is one of the founders and editors of Cyhoeddiadau’r Stamp and the poetry magazine Ffosfforws. She is also one of the co-editors of Welsh (plural) (Repeater, 2022), an anthology of essays which imagine an inclusive and particular Wales.

Mentee: Leo Drayton

Llwyd Owen has published fifteen novels since 2006, including Ffydd Gobaith Cariad which won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2007, Iaith y Nefoedd which reached the short list for the same award in 2019, and seven crime novels in the Gerddi Hwyan series, which follows the fortunes of the police and citizens of an imaginary town which has been described as “Cwmderi on crack” by one reviewer. In addition to writing books, Llwyd is also a translator and experienced creative writing tutor. He lives in Cardiff, the town of his birth, with his wife, children and dog.

Mentee: Si Griffiths

Mike Parker's books always take his sense of place as their starting point, but mix in memoir, history, identity, politics and belonging. They include the bestselling Map Addict, its critically acclaimed follow-up The Wild Rover and the cult Neighbours From Hell?  He has also written and presented numerous TV and radio series, including On the Map for BBC Radio 4, and for ITV Wales, Coast to Coast and Great Welsh Roads.

For the past eight years, he has been working on a loose trilogy.  Two books have so far been published: On the Red Hill (2019), an evocation of the queer rural, won the 2020 non-fiction Wales Book of the Year, and was shortlisted and Highly Commended for the Wainwright Prize for UK nature writing. Following it in spring 2023 was All the Wide Border, an examination of the England-Wales frontier as a line on the map, a line through history and a line in our heads. It was named by Waterstones as one of the ten best travel books of the year. 

Website: https://www.mikeparker.org.uk/

X @mikeparkerwales

Mentee: Marged Elen Wiliam

Lleucu hails from Llandre in Ceredigion, but has lived in Rhostryfan, Caernarfon for thirty years. Lleucu was educated at Rhydypennau and Penweddig schools and Aberystwyth University, where she received a Doctorate for her work on the medieval poets of the nobility. She was formerly an editor at Y Lolfa publishers, before embarking on a career as a translator and writer.

Lleucu worked as a writer and scriptwriter on numerous Welsh-language drama series on radio and television including Rownd a Rownd, Pengelli, Dau Dŷ a Ni, Amdani, Perthyn and Pobol y Cwm. She is the author of eight novels and two volumes of short stories for adults, and eight novels for children and young people. She won the Chair at the Urdd Eisteddfod in Pwllheli in 1982, the Tir na n-Og prize twice, for Annwyl Smotyn Bach and Stwff; the Daniel Owen Memorial Award twice for Rhwng Edafedd (2014) a Hannah-Jane (2021), and the Literature Medal twice for a volume of short stories Saith Oes Efa (2014), and a novel Y Stori Orau (2021). 

Mentee: Janett Morgan

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 Story 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

Mentee: Natasha Borton

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a cocurator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet was published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue by Derek Jarman, which was directed by Neil Bartlett and featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Blue sold out its run across the UK and more dates are expected for the future.

Website: http://www.joelletaylor.co.uk/

X: @jtaylortrash

Instagram: @jtaylortrash