Gwen Davies' Western Mail Insider column

Two blogs of interest from NWR... one relating to the Writers Chain India, where WAI are hopefully funding me to go this November, ... the other relates to the short story and my Kindle novella 'Arrivals'

Reading India, Translating Wales

Since spring, under WLE-LAF auspices, I’ve met writers at Ultracomida from Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and, most recently, from India. Those of us lucky enough to be there last month, where Reading India - Translating Wales took place, are still talking about it. The seven-strong team of Welsh-language and Indian poets had clearly bonded during their mid June translation residency at Ty Newydd. Multi-award winning writer and translator K Satchidanandan joked that the trip from Kerala was ‘worth it’ just to see Eurig Salisbury’s buoyant hair! The production values, as well as the poetic ones, were high. Part of the British Council-supported India Wales Writers Chain, which launched last year at Hay Festival Kerala (where poets Gillian Clarke, Menna Elfyn and Paul Henry were also present), the Aber event delivered a tremendous sense of an unbreakable chain. This was achieved through an inclusive and incantatory choreography of their performance: a presentation of work in Welsh, Manipuri, English, Bengali and Malayalam.

http://newwelshreview.blogspot.com/2011/08/reading-india-translating-wales.html

The Kindle Single and Masters of Ecstasy

"Novellas per se sell even worse than story collections. But just as capitalism abhors a vacuum, so Amazon created the Single Kindle: a marketplace for digital texts (including nonfiction and essays) of between 10,000 and 30,000 words. Parthian, ever quick off the mark, have brought out SK versions of the lead novellas from longer print editions: Aled Islwyn’s Muscles Came Easy (42 pages, £2.39) and Susie Willd’s Arrivals as well as highlights from classic Library of Wales authors Hilda Vaughan and Arthur Macken's 'The Great God Pan'. Hopefully Seren will give Glenda Beagan's similarly titled ‘The Great Master of Ecstasy’ the same e-treatment."

http://newwelshreview.blogspot.com/2011/07/kindle-single-and-masters-of-ecstasy.html

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BOOK REVIEW: 'one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Welsh writing in English'

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