Wales book of the year to be announced

Literature Wales reveals the full shortlist ahead of the ceremony taking place at Cardiff’s Tramshed

The Wales book of the year shortlist has been announced ahead of the award ceremony which will take place on Monday 13 November.

The awards are being held at the Tramshed and the nine-strong list includes fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry in the English and Welsh languages.

Established in 1992, the awards celebrate both creative writing and literary criticism from writers or works based in Wales.

The shortlist aims to celebrate the vibrant and diverse literary talent Wales has to offer and the works take the form of biographies, poetry collections and novels.

The winners of the prestigious awards will receive a cash prize as well as a trophy created by Welsh artist Angharad Pearce Jones.

Thomas Morris won the English language and Rhys Davies Trust fiction awards, as well as the public vote for the Wales Arts Review people’s choice award in 2016 for his debut collection of short stories called We Don’t Know What We’re Doing.

Thomas said he had planned to take a break from work to focus on writing his second book when he found out he had won the award and it helped to validate the decision he had made.

It also opened doors for his career in Wales with events booked at Waterstones in Cardiff, a guest speaker role at the inaugural Cardiff book festival.

Lleucu Siencyn, chief executive of Literature Wales said the event is one of the literary highlights of the year and the release of the shortlist has been a source of great excitement for Literature Wales.

He continued: “Readers will travel from the shadow of slate mountains to 60’s London; they’ll be lost at sea; they’ll experience the pain of radiation therapy; will learn about the history of Welsh art, and journey through themes of loss, myth and memory.”