'Nude, smoking, in the dawn doorway' shortlisted for Ink Sweat & Tears' August 2020 Pick of the Month

I'm chuffed to have been shortlisted for this!

'It’s Pick of the Month time and the shortlist for August 2020 has a definite family feel about it. Are you drawn to either John Grey or Sam Hickford as they try to make connections in ‘To a Father I Never Knew’ and ‘Familiar Tissue’, or appreciate, and identify with, Sunyi Dean transforming into her mother in ‘Dust’. Is it Susie Wild with her husband ‘Nude, smoking, in the dawn doorway’ that captivates or Frank Dullaghan, his sister singing him to sleep (past, present and future merging) in ‘How to Escape and Other Theories’, deserving your interest? Or does Lucy Atkinson pull at every parental instinct as you watch Persephone emerge from Winter in ‘Sunspot’?'

'All six of the shortlist have been chosen by Helen or Kate or received the most attention on social media.'

Place your vote now!

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New Welsh Writing Awards: The Winners!

Huge congratulations to Natasha Gauthier, Winner of the Borzello Trust Poetry Prize – winning a £500 development publishing contract with us – announced at our New Welsh Writing Awards ceremony in Abergavenny last night. It was a great pleasure to judge this award with Niall Griffiths. And congratulations to all the shortlisted poets whose work you can read in our next issue (138). Also, many congratulations to Sam Christie who won the The Rheidol Prize in the New Welsh Writing Awards with his story ‘The Widowmaker’ (judged by former NWR editor Gwen Davies and author David Lloyd Owen). Winning a £1000 development publishing contract with us. The two runners-ups prizes went to Natalie Ann Holborow with her story ‘The Man Who Knew Things’ and Sybilla Harvey with her story ‘The Flattening’. Both winning a creative residency with Gladstone's Library and Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre. You can read all three stories in our next issue of New Welsh Review .

REVIEW OF THE ART OF CONTRACEPTION | CARYS BRAY

'The Art of Contraception', Susie Wild The Art of Contraception, Susie Wild 'The Art of Contraception' is a collection of eleven short stories and a novella. These stories are linked by themes of relationships, sex and procreation. The first story 'Aquatic Life' is available to read online (see link below). Replete with watery imagery, it is a story of loneliness, secret desires and exotic holidays taken in the bath. Wild has a talent for writing about human oddness, hence the use of the word 'quirky' in so many of the descriptions of this collection. 'Pocillovy' is a story about a missing egg cup which suddenly becomes 'essential to the health and survival' of Alice's relationship, while 'Waxing, Waning' takes the reader on an altogether more unpleasant journey to Thailand with Natalie, who has a 'childlike need to believe in wishes coming true.' My favourite stories were 'Pica', in which a pregnant woman i...

BOOK REVIEW: 'It deserves to be read far more widely.'

In her engaging review essay 'Fantastical Doubles and Split Selves' in the latest issue of New Welsh Review , author of The Word, JL George, looks at responses to trauma in three recent novels including Fox Bites by Lloyd Markham . Here are three of our favourite snippets: ‘Lloyd Markham’s first full-length novel Fox Bites , set in early-2000s Zimbabwe, takes a similar tack, colliding social upheaval – as viewed through the sometimes-uncomprehending eyes of a young, neurodivergent boy – with smaller, more personal disruptions. The young protagonist, Taban, suffers bullying and isolation among his peers after his family splits apart: his aunt, uncle, and beloved cousin Caleb moving away to a farm which will later be seized during land reforms.’ ‘Taban must resist the temptation to become part of a cycle of abuse, thereby becoming a conduit for the destruction of his world. Although the stakes of the book eventually become world-threatening in the expected way of science fiction...

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