Mary Annes Payne won the Prose Medal at the National Eisteddfod 2007 at Mold for Rhodd Mam, published by Gomer Press. She has also published a novella, Hogyn Syrcas, which came close to winning the Prose Medal at the National Eisteddfod in 2002, at St. David’s, and also published by Gwasg Gomer, in 2003. She came third in a national short story competition sponsored by Boomerang TV Company in 2006 with her short story, Sgrech. This was published in Taliesin, and she has had another short story, Uchder Bol Camel, published in Taliesin.
She has more recently been working in English. Her novel, Madeleine, was shortlisted for the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller Prize in 2019, and longlisted for both the Bath Novel Award and the Blue Pencil First Novel Award in 2020, and the Yeovil Novel Prize in 2021. Her novel, The Girl Who Can’t Read, was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition in 2020. She has also had two short stories longlisted in the Frome short story competition.
She is a native of Brynsiencyn, Anglesey, graduated from the University of Wales, Bangor, with B.Ed Honours, worked as a primary teacher in Anglesey, moved to Scotland and worked as an English-language tutor to Vietnamese refugees and to the son of a Nigerian diplomat, returned to Wales and worked as a primary teacher in Montgomery and Anglesey, and retrained with the Bangor Dyslexia Unit and worked with children with special educational needs in Anglesey.
She currently lives in Anglesey, close to where she grew up.
