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Welcome
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Fflur
Dafydd a'r Barf: New Album Out - 16th November, 2009
Fflur Dafydd a'r Barf - Album Launch:
Fflur
Dafydd releases her third album, "Byd Bach"
(Small World), a concept album full of songs about various
locations in Wales, featuring Aberaeron, Penrhiwllan,
Cardiff, Porthgain, and the A470.
•
Carmarthen Quins Rugby Club
• Friday, 13th November 2009
• 9.00pm
• £5 Entry fee, all proceeds go to Plaid
Cymru.
Upcoming
Gigs:
• November 13 - Carmarthen Quins Rugby Club, Album
Launch
• November 20 - Duke of Clarence, Cardiff
• November 21 - Carmarthen Golf Club
(Byd
Bach - click here to read the press release) |
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PRESS
RELEASE: 01/09/09
FFLUR
DAFYDD WRITER IN RESIDENCE AT INTERNATIONAL WRITING
PROGRAM, IOWA UNIVERSITY
Fflur
is currently writer in residence at Iowa University,
where she will be researching her next English language
novel, The Library, between September 3rd and October
12th, 2009. She is supported by the British Council
and will also be taking part in a number of events –
see below:
Schedule of Events for Fflur Dafydd
(as of 8/20/2009:)
Public Events in Iowa
•
9/9: Reading at Prairie Lights Books, 7:00 PM
15 South Dubuque Street, Iowa City, IA USA
1-800-295-BOOK; http://www.prairielights.com/
•
9/25: Panel Presentation at the Iowa City Public Library,
12:00 PM
Meeting Room A, 123 South Linn Street, Iowa
City, IA USA
(319) 356-5200; http://www.icpl.org/
Panel
Topic: “Translation/Writing Between Languages”
Description: In what ways has translating,
or writing across more than one language, been important
to your literary thinking and/or to your creative
process?
Other
panelists: Vicente Groyon (Philippines), Soheil Najm
(Iraq), Lijia Zhang (China)
• NB: other events are forthcoming
and may include one or more musical performances by
Fflur at one of several venues in downtown Iowa City.
Academic Presentations/Classroom Visits in Iowa
(NB: Classroom visits are NOT open to the public)
• 9/21 International Literature Today.
Fflur Dafydd will speak for 15-20 minutes to students
enrolled in this undergraduate literature course.
Special Seminar in Creative Writing
Fflur Dafydd will teach a special creative writing seminar
to undergraduates at the University of Iowa. This four-week
course will meet from 2:30-4:30 PM on 9/11, 9/18, 9/25,
and 10/2. Students will gather in a seminar room at
the Writers’ House at 111 Church Street, a unique
campus space dedicated to fostering writing, artistic
collaboration, and literary performance at the University
of Iowa.
Activities in Portland, Oregon, 10/3-10/9
(Includes public events and classroom visits)
Fflur Dafydd will join four other IWP writers in Portland,
Oregon for several days of readings, talks, and other
professional programming. Barry Sanders (west-coast-based
author, Senior Fulbright Scholar, two-time Pulitzer
Prize nominee, and English professor) is hosting this
series of literary events, in collaboration with colleagues
at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State
University, Oregon Council for the Humanities, and other
local partners. This will be the first IWP delegation
to take part in such a dynamic slate of activities in
the city.
The
precise programme in Portland is still TBD, but will
include some or all of the following activities:
•
An opening reception at Pacific Northwest College
of Art, a fine arts college located in the city of
Portland. http://www.pnca.edu/.
•
Visits to classes at PNCA and the opportunity to participate
in a group reading in the Commons, a large open art-space
in the heart of campus: http://www.pnca.edu/studentlife/facilities/commons.php
•
An informal roundtable discussion at Portland State
University, sponsored by the creative writing department
and the English department on the topic of politics
and writing.
Trips to see the countryside of the Pacific Northwest--the
Gorge, the falls, the many rivers, etc.
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click
on one of the above images for more information on 'Y
Llyfrgell'
click
here to view the winning
ceremony on BBC iPlayer |
PRESS
RELEASE: 04/08/09
FROM
BARDSEY NUNS TO ARMED LIBRARIANS - OXFAM HAY EMERGING
WRITER OF THE YEAR SCOOPS TOP WELSH FICTION PRIZE
Hot
on the heels of her success at the Guardian Hay Festival,
where she was named Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer of the
Year for her first English novel Twenty Thousand
Saints, is yet another prestigious literary prize
for Fflur Dafydd. On Tuesday 4 August, Fflur scooped
the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize at the National Eisteddfod
of Wales for a controversial Welsh-language novel, Y
Llyfrgell (The Library.) This is the second Eisteddfod
prize for Fflur, who won the coveted Prose Medal in
2006, and this is also her fourth novel. Fflur was presented
with a £5000 cash prize and the Daniel Owen Memorial
Medal, as well as receiving a special
hard-bound copy of her novel.
The
novel, set in 2020, takes a satirical look at one of
the most iconic Welsh institutions, the National Library
of Wales. It follows a group of characters during one
dramatic day when two armed, female librarians take
the readers hostage in the reading room. This black
comedy’s satire targets librarians as well as
academics; civil servants, poets, politicians and even
porters. The author throws them mercilessly together
into a sinister, bizarre, and darkly funny scenario.
Its topicality, meanwhile, draws on recent library closures,
and it gives an intelligent spin to digitisation and
the impending threat of the e-book. Y Llyfrgell
presents a world where women have the top jobs, where
politicians hold too much sway over what gets published
and documented, and it raises important questions about
the author’s role in a digitised future.
The
judges of the competition, John Rowlands, Geraint Vaughan
Jones and Rhiannon Lloyd, were unanimous in their decision
and commended the author’s innovation and ingenuity,
describing Fflur’s novel as “brimful of
humour, unforgettable characters, and an excellent narrative”.
The novel marks out a new genre in Welsh-language fiction,
which is a playful take on the literary mystery, allying
Y Llyfrgell closer to international works such
as Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind or
Ann Patchett’s political siege novel Bel Canto
than anything previously published in Welsh.
Y
Llyfrgell was inspired by Fflur’s many visits
to the National Library of Wales as a PhD student, back
in 2004. She said,
“I
was there every day for three months, and found myself
dreaming up all sorts of dramatic scenarios! As one
of our most important national institutions, the Library
holds all our secrets and history, but because of its
decorum and its silence, this is the last place one
would expect any kind of uprising. That tension interests
me as a writer.”
Twenty
Thousand Saints, the work which won Fflur the Oxfam
Hay Emerging Writer of the Year is set on Bardsey Island
amid a temporary community including a lesbian political
activist-turned nun, an archaeologist and an ex-convict.
It has received fantastic and wide-ranging reviews including
in The Guardian, Diva magazine, Western Mail and
Prospect magazine, where it was 2008’s pick
of the year; the novel is currently in the summer selection
of the bookshop promotion Exclusively Independent. Hay
Festival director Peter Florence has been a consistent
and vocal advocate of Twenty Thousand Saints,
describing it as, The most compelling novel I’ve
read in years; a love story, a thriller, and a profound
meditation on language and identity... [Fflur Dafydd
ranks alongside] Sarah Waters, Kate Atkinson and Zoe
Heller [in representing] the blossoming and triumphs
of a whole new generation of young women writers.”
Fflur
Dafydd is a singer songwriter and novelist from Carmarthen,
who currently lectures in the English Department at
Swansea University. She is a graduate of UEA’s
prestigious creative writing course and also has a PhD
on the poetry of R.S. Thomas. In September, she will
be taking up a 6-week residency at the University of
Iowa’s International Writing Program, the US’
most prestigious centre for creative writing, where
she will also be writing and researching her next English-language
novel.
Reviews
/ More:
»
'Y Llyfrgell': National Library
of Wales
»
'Y Llyfrgell': Western Mail
»
'Y Llyfrgell': Meirion and District
National Eisteddfod, 2009
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PRESS
RELEASE: 24/05/09
Fflur
Dafydd named as Emerging Writer of the Year at Hay Festival
Author Fflur Dafydd was last night
announced as the winner of the Oxfam Emerging
Writer of the Year Award at the Guardian
Hay Festival. During a special ceremony at
the Sky Arts Dinner, Peter Florence, director of the
festival, declared that Dafydd’s novel Twenty
Thousand Saints, a literary thriller set
on Bardsey island, was the best novel he’d read
in the past ten years, and that she was one of the most
exciting young fiction writers to emerge from Wales.
This is Dafydd’s first work of fiction in English,
and she was awarded was the Prose Medal at the National
Eisteddfod in 2006 for her Welsh language novel Atyniad.
David McCullough, Director of Oxfam
said “We are very happy to work in partnership
with the Hay Festival this year and congratulate Fflur
Dafydd on being the first winner of our Emerging Writer
of the Year Award.”
As
part of her prize, she was presented with a very rare
first edition hardback copy of Harper Lee’s To
Kill a Mockingbird, donated by Oxfam’s
books product development manager, Graham Draisey.
Fflur
also took part in two successful events at the Guardian
Hay Festival, reading with Dylan Thomas Prize Winner
Nam Le, and the writer and broadcaster Jon Gower.
She
will now embark on a reading tour to promote Twenty
Thousand Saints, appearing at the Latitude
Festival, Suffolk and the Writers’ Reunion in
Finland.
Twenty
Thousand Saints is published by Alcemi
Press.
Reviews
/ More:
» 'Twenty
Thousand Saints': Catherine Taylor, The Guardian
» 'Twenty Thousand Saints':
Author's Notes, Western Mail
» 'Twenty Thousand Saints':
Diva
» 'Twenty Thousand Saints':
Western Mail
»
'Twenty Thousand Saints': SwanseaLife |
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