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Reimagined Communities: Writing from Wales

August 2019

August-2019-Writing-from-Wales-Lea-Sautin-Forest
Image: Lea Sautin, "Forest." Woodcut. Courtesy of Lea Sautin.

This month we present writing from Wales. From nineteenth-century religious fervor to twenty-first century dystopia, in lush rural villages and desolate urban streetscapes, the fiction here reflects a national literature incorporating diversity into a fight for survival. Start with Casi Dylan’s insightful introduction to this little-known literary landscape, then turn to these stellar examples. Welsh Book of the Year winner Manon Steffan Ros portrays a mother and son writing their lives in a postapocalyptic Wales. Llŷr Gwyn Lewis’s epistolary tale reveals a Baptist missionary who travels to Japan only to find herself converting to a new way of life. Caryl Lewis depicts a household besieged by multiple intruders, while Fflur Dafydd observes a resentful lackey scheming in his supervisor’s absence. And Llwyd Owen conjures a grim future in which the Welsh language itself is a crime. We thank our guest editors, Alexandra Büchler, Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, and Cari Lake, and the Wales Literature Exchange.

Reimagined Communities: An Introduction to Welsh Writing
By Casi Dylan
In a world reimagining its cultural and political axes, Welsh-language literature gives voice to an experience more necessary and valuable now than ever.
Dolores Morgan’s Letters from the Far East
By Llŷr Gwyn Lewis
I have become Japanese and I am no longer a Welshwoman.
Translated from Welsh by Katie Gramich
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The Blue Book of Nebo
By Manon Steffan Ros
It happened so quickly. The End.
Translated from Welsh by the author
The Root
By Caryl Lewis
Yes, there was a shadow there.
Translated from Welsh by George Jones
The Library Suicides
By Fflur Dafydd
Dan believed it had all started going wrong when they took away his keys.
Translated from Welsh by the author