Gwyl Lyfrau Aberaeron Book Festival 2024

Gwyneth Lewis

Gwyneth Lewis was appointed Wales’s first National Poet in 2005, and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre which have become an icon for Wales. Awarded an MBE in 2022 for services to literature and mental health, Gwyneth has published nine books of poetry with a tenth, First Rain in Paradise due to be published in 2025. Gwyneth’s newly published memoir Nightshade Mother – A Disentangling recounts her toxic upbringing at the hands of her controlling, coercive mother.

We are delighted to welcome Gwyneth to the 2024 festival to give the opening address and reading.

Tom Leworthy

Tom hails from and has returned to New Quay, grew up in Lampeter and spent most of his life travelling the world, first as a submariner in the Royal Navy and later in the Rhodesian Air Force. His new memoir paints a detailed picture of post-war mid-Ceredigion, covers a bygone age of Navy life and gives an insider view of the horrors of war combined with family life.
Tom will be discussing Seaworthy Leworthy: New Quay, Lampeter, The World with Karen Gemma Brewer on Saturday.

Alis Hawkins

Alis Hawkins grew up in Ceredigion and currently lives on the Welsh-English border. Her Teifi Valley Coroner historical crime series – featuring partially-sighted ex-barrister Harry Probert-Lloyd and his chippy assistant, John Davies – is set in the area where she grew up and has twice been shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Historical Dagger. A Bitter Remedy, the first in her new Oxford Mysteries series which introduces readers to young Welsh polymath Rhiannon Vaughan and college lecturer Basil Rice, was published in March 2023. At the festival Alis will be discussing her latest Oxford based novel, The Skeleton Army, which has recently been published in paperback. Alis is also a co-founder of the Welsh crime writing collective Crime Cymru and is taking part in the Crime panel on Saturday alongside Louise Mumford, chaired by Sarah Ward.

Louise Mumford

Louise lives in Cardiff with her husband and spends her time trying to get down on paper all the marvellous and thrilling things that happen in her head. Her debut book, Sleepless, a “frighteningly inventive” speculative thriller inspired by her own experience of insomnia, was published in December 2020. The Safe House was released in May 2022 and The Hotel which came out in August 2023.
Louise’s latest thriller is The Festival, a pacy story of two young women, Libby and Dawn, who win tickets to the hottest music festival set deep in the Welsh countryside but discover that the festival has a very dark side.
A member of Crime Cymru, Louise is also a member of the Crime Writers’ Association. In 2023 she was one of only ten writers picked to be part of Hay Festival’s prestigious Writers At Work scheme, a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent.
Louise is taking part in the Crime panel on Saturday with Alis Hawkins, chaired by Sarah Ward.

Kathy Miles

Award winning poet Kathy Miles lives in West Wales. Her third poetry collection, Gardening with Deer, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2016, and a pamphlet, Inside the Animal House, by Rack Press in 2018. Bone House was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2020. Kathy’s most recent poetry collection is Vanishing Point published in 2024 by Palewell Press Ltd.
Kathy’s poetry appears widely in magazines and anthologies, and she is a previous winner of the Second Light, Welsh Poetry and Wells Festival competitions, as well as the Bridport Prize. A co-editor of ‘The Lampeter Review’, Kathy is a frequent reader at literary events.
Kathy is taking part in the Poetry Panel on Saturday afternoon and is also taking a workshop on Sunday, 1.15-2.45pm. Book here

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch is a poet published by Seren, Picador and Rack Press. Twice shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year and for the Michael Marks Award, she has performed at the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Salon du Livre in Paris, and at the Cellar Bards in Cardigan. She has taught at Trinity Saint David University as well as on the Masters programme at Oxford University and is now a freelance writer and tutor.
Samantha is taking part in the Poetry Panel on Saturday afternoon and is also taking a workshop on Saturday, 11-12.30pm. Book here

Natalie Ann Holborow

Natalie is a winner of the Terry Hetherington Award and the Robin Reeves Prize and has been shortlisted and commended for the Bridport Prize, the National Poetry Competition, the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the Cursed Murphy Spoken Word Award among others. Her writing residencies with the British Council, Literature Wales and Kultivera have seen her writing and performing poetry in Wales, Ireland, Sweden and India.
Natalie is the author of the poetry collections And Suddenly You Find Yourself and Small – both listed as Best Poetry Collections of the Year by Wales Arts Review – and, with Mari Ellis Dunning, the collaborative poetry pamphlet The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass. Little Universe is her third full collection, recently published in 2024 by Parthian.
Natalie lives in Swansea, is a proud patron of local charity The Leon Heart Fund, and runs marathons to raise funds.
Natalie is taking part in the Poetry Panel on Saturday afternoon and is also taking a workshop on Saturday, 2.30-4pm. Book here

Dr Rhys Jones

Dr Rhys Jones is a Cardiff University Associate Professor, Science and Wildlife presenter. As a BAFTA nominated (Best Presenter) Television and Radio presenter, his BBC television career spans over two decades and includes Rhys’s Network Primetime BBC One television series ‘Rhys Jones’s Wildlife Patrol’ and he also delivered two seasons of his hit BBC series ‘Rhys to the Rescue’, and guest presented for both Chris Packham’s ‘Nature’s Calendar’ and Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Saving Planet Earth’. He presented the Royal Welsh Show on BBC Wales between 2007-2015.
Becoming Dr Jones is Rhys’s first book, published in hardback in 2023 and now available in paperback. Described as ‘inspirational’ by Prof. Alice Roberts, the book takes us on a wild journey through his life, first inspired as a child by Indiana Jones!
Rhys is discussing his life and adventures on Saturday afternoon with Aberaeron author Elly Foster.

Louise Bretland-Treharne

Louise has a background in general nursing, a specialist qualification in neuroscience nursing and some experience in mental health nursing. She also trained as a classical singer in her twenties. She lives with a combination of complex neurological conditions and has written a memoir Warm Tears in the Cold giving an account of her life, the emergence of various neurological conditions and the grace with which she faces these increasingly life-limiting challenges.
Warm Tears in the Cold is being launched at the festival and Louise will be in conversation with Dave Urwin.

Russ Williams

Where the folk can I find a hungover ghost?  the scream of a banshee?  a genuine fairy-tale castle? You’ll find answers to these and more in this folklore treasure hunt through Wales.
Russ Williams was raised on Wales’s stories, like the one about a mountain that would send you mad or turn you into a gifted poet if you camped out on it, the one about the lost civilisation drowned by the sea and the one about the bottomless lake leading down to the Welsh Otherworld. In Where the Folk Russ takes us to the places associated with Wales’s legends, folklore and urban myths. Along the way Russ explores the origins behind the myths, talking to experts and storytellers to find out how and why they might have come about, and what they  tell us about Wales past and present.
Russ is taking part in the Where’s The Folk panel on Saturday afternoon with Aberystwyth based folk singer and songwriter Daniel Laws, in discussion with Elizabeth Evans.

Daniel Laws

Daniel is a singer/songwriter/performer based in Aberystwyth, west Wales and has been composing and performing songs for thirteen years. They tell stories of welsh folklore, traditions, history, social history, love and nature. Some uplifting, some funny, some sad and those with rousing choruses for the audience to join in.
Daniel draws his inspiration from his observations and experiences while out walking and also from his years being involved in agriculture which began when he was a lad on his grandparents farm in Tregaron, Ceredigion.
Daniel is taking part in the Where’s the Folk panel on Saturday with author Russ Williams, in discussion with Elizabeth Evans.

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CP Davies

Christine Davies was brought up in the Carmarthenshire seaside town of Burry Port. After studying Biological Sciences at University College, London, she trained as a secondary school teacher and taught Biology in schools in Carmarthenshire and Warwickshire. In her mid-twenties she returned to university (Bristol) to study for a PhD and subsequently spent several years undertaking biomedical research. In the 1990s she returned to West Wales along with her husband and young daughter, and also returned to education. Over the last twenty years she has lectured in science and/or education-focused topics at the Universities of Swansea, Glamorgan, and Trinity Saint David, as well as the Open University.
Retirement in 2021 provided the opportunity to rekindle her interest in fiction, resulting in the completion of Trecadno, a novel she started twenty years earlier.

Karen Gemma Brewer

Born of coal-mining and farm-working stock, Karen Gemma Brewer is an award winning poet, songwriter and performer in Aberaeron. Her work combines mundanity with the absurd, has been translated into several languages, performed internationally and published in Europe and USA. Her first poetry collection Seeds From A Dandelion is in a second edition and her new collection Dancing In The Sun was published in 2022. Karen’s next collection, More Scarecrow than Pirate, is due out in 2025.
Karen is co-owner of Gwisgo Bookworm, co-organiser of Gwyl Lyfrau Aberaeron Book Festival and is chairing the Poetry Panel on Saturday afternoon. Also festival chair, if there’s a spare moment Karen will be found on stage filling the gaps with her trademark humour and she will be opening proceedings with a poetry set on Sunday morning.

Geraint Lewis

Geraint is a freelance writer covering a broad range of media over thirty years, including TV, film, radio, theatre and books, mainly through the medium of Welsh. Also an experienced actor in Welsh and English, including Pobol Y Cwm and the film Martha, Jac a Sianco.
Following a recent showing of the film at the National Library, Geraint will be questioned by Clwb Darllan Dyffryn Arth on his film and TV career, recent plays and short stories and his forthcoming novel Haydn a Rhys.
Clwb Darllan Dyffryn Arth meet on alternate Thursday evenings, 5.30pm at Rhos yr Hafod, Cross Inn, Llanon. If you’re interested in joining the group please ask on the day.

Sarah Ward

Sarah is a critically acclaimed crime writer and on Saturday will chair the Crime Cymru panel, talking to Alis Hawkins and Louise Mumford.
Sarah writes a crime series set in west Wales close to where she spent her childhood. The Birthday Girl, The Sixth Lie and The Vanishing Act are the first three titles in the Mallory Dawson series. Also the author of Gothic historical thrillers under the name Rhiannon Ward, her first, The Quickening, was a 2020 Radio Times book of the year. She has also written Doctor Who audio dramas. Sarah is on the Board of the Crime Writers Association, a member of Crime Cymru and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Sheffield University.
On Sunday Sarah will be discussing her new thriller Death Rites, the first in a new series featuring archaeology professor Carla James, in conversation with Niki Brewer. Niki is co-owner of Gwisgo Bookworm and co-organiser of the Gwyl Lyfrau Aberaeron Book Festival.

Judith Barrow

Judith has an MA in Creative Writing, B.A. (Hons.) in Literature, and a Diploma in Drama and Script Writing.  She is also a Creative Writing tutor for Pembrokeshire County Council’s Lifelong Learning Programme, give talks and run workshops on all genres and is joint founder of the Narbeth Book Festival. Judith grew up in the Pennines but has lived in Pembrokeshire for 40 years.
The author of several novels, The Memory was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year in 2021. We are delighted to be launching Judith’s new novel The Stranger in my House at the Festival where Judith will be in conversation with writer Thorne Moore.
Judith is also taking a workshop on Sunday 11-12.30pm. Book here

Richard Wyn-Jones

Richard Wyn Jones is Professor of Welsh Politics and Director of the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University. Richard is a regular and widely respected broadcaster, commentating on Welsh politics in both Welsh and English for the BBC in Wales and across the UK. He has presented two TV series and is a regular columnist for the Welsh language current affairs magazine Barn. In addition, he has contributed comment columns to a number of newspapers including the Western Mail, Irish Times, The Guardian and Sunday Times, and has been extensively quoted in the international press.
Richard is in conversation with Cynog Dafis discussing his newly published (in English) book, Putting Wales First – The Political Thought of Plaid Cymru Vol 1. In this authoritative volume, he traces the development of the political thought of Plaid Cymru from its birth in the winter months of 1924-5 to the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales in the summer of 1999.

Catrin Kean

Catrin was awarded a place on the Hay Festival Writers At Work scheme for emerging writers from 2016 – 18. Her short stories have been published in Riptide Journal, Bridge House Anthologies, The Ghastling, and Syncopation Journal.
Her debut novel Salt won the 2021 Rhys Davies Fiction award, the Wales Arts Review People’s Choice Award, and the overall Wales Book of the Year Award. Lace is her second novel, an emotional and intricate follow-up to Salt, it introduces us to a new generation and a dark history stirred by a birth in the family.
Catrin is on the Honno panel on Sunday afternoon alongside Sophie Buchaillard, interviewed by LE Fitzpatrick.

Sophie Buchaillard

Sophie Buchaillard writes contemporary fiction that reflects on the anxieties of our age, using movement and migration, to connect history with our reality. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a wide array of literary magazines and newspapers. She also writes about the environment under the handle #plasticfree.
Her first novel This Is Not Who We Are (Seren) was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2023. Sophie’s 2nd novel is Assimilation, a multi-generational historical drama, full of mystery and deeply-wrought circumstances.
Sophie is on the Honno panel on Sunday afternoon with Catrin Kean, interviewed by LE Fitzpatrick.