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A mix of deceitfully plain reportage; fictive history and fictional forays into the past. As he reaches eighty Dai Smith comes out swinging with Measuring the Distance.

Miners at the Quarry Pool is an unapologetic, yet satisfying examination of the spaces we inhabit and our existence within those spaces.

So whose Wales is it? There is a degree of ambiguity that runs through Welsh politics that in turn has hindered discussions of a clear Welsh political identity. Can any one party claim to have done more than any other in the fight for securing and developing Welsh devolution? This book looks at these claims and counterclaims.

'A remarkable and important book' - Murdo Macdonald, Planet Peter Lord surveys the evolution of the visual culture of Wales from the Renaissance to the end of the twentieth century in this new, single-volume history. The author describes both how the work emerged from its Welsh historical context and was related to the art of other cultures. Revealing the many discoveries made since the first publication of The Visual Culture of Wales series in 1998, The Tradition is the only study now in print that encompasses the whole field of Welsh visual art. Written for everyone with an interest in the art and history of Wales, the volume illustrates some 400 landscapes and portrait paintings, prints and sculptures.

Written by miner, union organiser and activist Lewis Jones, Cwmardy is the story of Big Jim, collier and Boer war soldier and his wife Siâ n as they strive to wrest a decent life from dire conditions despite the exploitation of mine owners and the apathy of a distant and uncaring political class. In We Live, their son Len emerges as a sharp-thinker and dynamic political organiser. He is influenced by Mary, a teacher, and the politics of the Communist Party, which will become central to his work both underground and with the union. It will ultimately lead to his decision to leave and fight in the Spanish Civil War. Echoing the European classics of Zola and Maupassant, the lives of Big Jim, Siâ n, Len and Mary reflect the changing times of a turbulent world which will see them survive strikes, riots, and biting poverty while the dark shadows of a world war gather to offer an uncertain future.

Set in a diverse Cardiff and Newport, the novella Anna and the Angel transforms the apocryphal tale from the Book of Tobit. Edna and Anna, the women of the original story, are brought from the shadows to tell their own tale.

Set in contemporary Cardiff, this diverse, pacey, high-concept time-warp crime novella explores themes of violence, ritual and alternative realities, while it seeks to honour the victims of serial killers and challenge the way that some have become part of the tourism industry.

This arresting series of documentary photographs shows the life and landscape of five small settlements in South Wales. These communities in the Afan Valley, after the pit closures, had to deal with high levels of unemployment and found themselves with severe adjustment problems.

Join Peter as he ascends Orangutan Overhang, Supermassive Black Hole and Mental Lentils in the disused Dinorwig slate quarries of Snowdonia. Part creative nonfiction, part memoir and sports documentary, Slatehead is set in Thatcher's Britain and the present day. This was Thatcher's lost generation.

The poems in Natalie Ann Holborow's Little Universe are an exploration of tumultuous human emotions and nature's ever-present rhythms.

Joe England explores the possible constitutional meltdown of a divided UK and its consequences, reflecting on Wales' position as the poorest nation of all. As a constitutional crisis looms, this book contemplates a reimagined Wales and what that would mean for its people.

In pursuit of moments of feeling 'sharply alive' and confronting fear of the body's betrayals, Birdsplaining is focused unapologetically on the uniqueness of women's experience of nature and constraints placed upon it. Sometimes bristling, always ethical, it upends familiar ways of seeing the natural world.

As much about learning a language as it is about nature, this dignified and nuanced memoir of the author's stay on the remote Hokkaido island in the far north of Japan evokes what is cultured and cultivated, and yet also honours the wild; the untranslatable.

Dead birds fall from the sky, an octopus lies stranded on a beach, and a lost shoe becomes a public shrine ... Untethered, Philippa Holloway's first collection of short stories, provides an unflinching glimpse of daily life interrupted by unexpected events.

Feral Monster follows Jax and her noisy, opinionated brain as they navigate love, identity, class and family. Mashing up grime, R&B, soul, pop and rap, the soundtrack takes us from the high highs to low lows of the hormonal rollercoaster of adolescence. A banging musical about an unremarkable teenager. Expelled from school and not even able to get a job at the chippy, Jax (she/they/whatever) is a cocky, loveable teen living with her Nan in a tiny, boring village. When Jax meets Ffion, with her smart talk and loud looks, sparks fly. Queer teenage lust brings together this unlikely match in all its messy, clumsy and awesome glory. First performed at Sherman Theatre in Cardiff in February 2024 before touring to Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Pontio in Bangor, Ffwrnes in Llanelli and Theatr Brycheiniog in Brecon.

A worker is killed in the striking coalfields of south Wales. Some months later a government minister suspected of being connected with the death is shot. Lewis Redfern, once a radical, now a political analyst and journalist, pursues the killer, a lonely hunt that leads him through a maze of government leaks and international politics to a secret organization: a source of insurrection far more powerful than anyone could have suspected. A compelling thriller, The Volunteers is also an engrossing reminder of the conflict between moral choice and political loyalty for through his obsessive pursuit of justice, Redfern finally encounters the truth about himself.

When Taban wishes for the world to end something out there . . . hears him. Soon the young boy is being stalked by a fox whose salivating jaws drag him into strange dreams. Dreams where he is a revolutionary with ancient psychic powers fighting against a tyrannical regime. He awakes with glowing scars that only he can see and the lingering embers of telekinetic abilities. Honing this flicker of power over years he plots revenge on the bullies who've abused him. In exchange he will become the conduit for the world's end. But what if he changes his mind? Surely we can all come back from the edge? Can we?

Featuring discussion transcripts, poetry, photography, collages and prose. A man takes to the ballroom scene after months of lockdown in Há N?i, entranced by the vogue gods. An 81 year old lesbian artist writes to her ex-lovers daughter to explore her ten strange dreams. At 2am a young woman strides through Queen Street, Cardiff writing love notes to her cariad. Exploring sexuality, love and loss, language, cultural heritage, nature and joy this anthology sheds light on the queer experience in Wales and Vi't Nam.

This beautiful, poetic debut novel warn of the dangers of being a quiet person in a loud world and letting magnetic strangers pull your strings. Set on the Welsh coast, Unspeakable Beauty is an unsettling coming-of-age tale.

Marking 60 years since her death, this collection featuring 50 poems that have been carefully selected by TV producer Jenni Cranewill shine a light once again on Haycock's lyrical landscape.

The south Wales Valleys, 23rd June, 2016. It's another long day chopping beef carcasses up at the slaughterhouse for former reality TV star and Iron Man contender, Caleb Jenkins, whose untroubled world unravelled when his old man's carpet business went bust last year, another casualty of the global financial crisis. While he's busy trying to manage the well-being of his conspiracy-theorist brother, the mortgage keeping a roof over his bankrupt parents' heads, his own excruciating grief, internal rage and impossible credit score, politicians of all persuasions are promising the scared and voiceless people around him real change.Desperate for acknowledgement and a transformation he can't quite bring about by his own means, Caleb is on the edge.Easy Meat is a glimpse of a young man and a country on the verge of a momentous decision.

Nigel Jenkins's body of work is remarkable not just for the range of its forms and occasions, but for the variety of its literary, cultural and political commitments. He campaigned for Welsh devolution and international solidarity with the same sense of purpose as he campaigned against nuclear power, militarism and racism. A politically- and culturally committed poet he was unafraid to be satirical, or epic, or polemical, or to be simply and frankly angry. This book contains love poems and poems of desire, lyric poems and public poems for public spaces, occasional poems that transcend their occasions, merciless satires, and poems that borrow epic voices, whether of bravado or lament, and retool them for today's challenges. There are poems written in the spirit of high-intellectual play and urgent poems about environmental degradation, militarism, nuclear folly, imperialism and capitalism. There is beauty and precision, outrage and indignation, savage wit and deep empathy. The book also contains a number of Jenkins's translations from the Welsh - a reflection of his commitment to the bilingualism and biculturalism of his country, and to the idea of a community of poets. A sense of history underpins Nigel Jenkins's writing, but it is the present that propels it. In that sense, his poetry and prose are part of a single, albeit various, oeuvre. They are the work of a writer who believed that poetry has a duty to engage with the world as it is, while holding out the imaginative possibilities of what it can be.

Norman Schwenk's animal stories are a long way from Disneyland. They focus on the strange, complicated links people forge with animals, and how they illuminate the even more mysterious links people have with other people.

The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition recognises the very best unpublished short stories in English in any style by writers aged 18 or over who were born in Wales, have lived in Wales for two years or more, or are currently living in Wales.

This collection brings together leading voices from female writers, artists, commentators and academics to reflect on how devolution has affected them and altered our political and social landscapes. Here,a series of creative and personal responses explore the true impact of devolution on the lives of women living and working in Wales.