Blogs
We do not often resort to appeals of this kind. We know that its only by making this a worthwhile site that we will attract new members. With that in mind we attempt to be as entertaining and informative as we can and we are always on the lookout for new features for our members to enjoy. Hopefully a number of new and exciting features will be introduced over the next week or so,.... BUT many of you may have noticed that we now have 978 members. We would love to make our one thousandth member by, or on, St David's Day. We feel that it would be a superb way to celebrate a special occasion on the site.
So we are appealing to anyone who may still have friends or family members who they havent invited to please do so now. Also if you've already invited people ...ask them to join again. Uncle Dai needs you on St. David's Day!
( The easy way to invite members is to go to the "Invite" tab on the main navigation bar in between "Home" and "MyPage". Click on it and simply enter the email addresses of the persons you want to invite. Include a comma between each address if there is more than one. You can add a short personal message if you want but either way the email will appear as a personal invite from you in the recipients inbox . Hope that helps. )
Lets make it 1000 by March 1st!
Diolch yn fawr
Americymru
Weve added a few new features over on the Americymru Blog,...some tunes and a twitter feed in the right hand column. You can join the site by registering with your Google or Yahoo password and there is a comment wall and a few other "social" features enabled. We'll be adding more as Google Friends Connect adds to its repertoire:-
http://americymru.blogspot.com
Meanwhile our new chat feature and the new updated and revamped photo, video and music players are all scheduled for release on Thursday night ( probably about 7 p.m. Pacific Time ). If all goes according to plan you'll find chat in a bar at the bottom of the page ( a la Facebook ) and you will be able to access it from every page on the site. Also ( assuming that it works ok ) we'll put the new music player at the bottom of the page as well so you'll be able to access our music library while chatting or IM'ing.
More new features coming soon. Stay tuned!
Writer Niall Griffiths is the author of six novels, radio plays, numerous travel articles and lives in Aberystwyth, Wales.
AMERICYMRU: How did you start writing?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: I picked up a pen. Honestly; it seems to've been that simple. I don't know why. There was never any books in the house, but it was full of stories, especially from my grandparents, of the old countries, the war, ghost stories etc. I don't remember the very first thing I wrote but it happened as soon as my motor functions were developed enough to hold a pen. I wrote novels at a very young age, about giant crabs and man-eating wolves, etc. My mum still has them, I think, somewhere. The world seemed less dangerous and threatening when I was writing about it. It seems like writing is always a thing I've felt a terrific compulsion to do. Don't know why, and don't care why, either; I don't question these things. Just accept them.
AMERICYMRU: What is your process as a writer? do you write every day, write in fits and starts, carry a notebook or voice recorder around with you? What's your creative flow?
NIALL GRIFFITH: Well, if I'm working on something big, I let it dictate itself. I'll work every day on it, yes, but if it's not flowing, I stop trying after a couple of hours. If it is flowing, then I can be at my desk for ten hours or so. The average, I guess, is about five hours. I carry a notebook everywhere. And I must write something every day, even if it's only a scribbled free-verse poem or an entry in my journal; I feel wretched if I don't. A blemish on the earth. Catholic guilt perhaps, but so what? It makes me feel worthy, and happy, and alive. Oh, and first-draft always longhand. Probably something to do with being brought up working-class. A proper job gets your hands dirty, even if it is just with smears of ink.
AMERICYMRU: One thing you're fantastically good at is staying in your character's voice throughout a story. Your first-person narrative in Runt, not a simple or easy character, is flawless. Do you base your characters on people that you've met or just develop them wholly yourself?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: Runt was kind of lucky, really; I wrote it in Sweden, when I was writer-in-residence at Lund university, a very flat part of the country. Where I live in Wales, as soon as I step out of the door, I'm bombarded by mountainous words, but in Lund, I wasn't surrounded by high ground, so it was relatively easy to stay within the 700-word or so lexicon that the main character possesses. Call it serendipity. In answer to your question, tho, I guess I'd have to say I don't know. Some parts observation, some parts imagination, and the ratio shifts for each character.
AMERICYMRU: Are your characters built before or as you write them of the things you're writing about, like the description of Kelly with the lamb in her dinosaur's teeth in Kelly+Victor ?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: Again, a bit of both. That particular episode was autobiographical; I actually put shreds of meat into the mouth of a plastic dinosaur, although my dinosaur was a triceratops, which, as we all know, is a vegetarian. I painted his beak blood-red, too. Characters grow as I write them, often exponentially so, and they don't really come to life for me until they open their gobs and speak or do something to surprise me. That sounds horribly precious, and I apologise, but that is kind of how it works: the character becomes rounded when they act out of character. I don't have any time for the kind of writer who says things like 'I love turning my laptop on in the morning to see what my characters have got up to overnight', but I understand what they mean. Sort of. And I'd never tell them that.
AMERICYMRU: The protagonist in Runt is such a beautiful, unusual character - what was your inspiration for him,how did you produce this person and his life?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: Sheer genius. And see the answer to question 3. Also, I wanted to write a book with a restricted vocabulary. I love words, and love being ravished by them, and love creating storms with them, and I wanted to do that in a way other than simply unblocking a torrent, so if I deliberately restrained myself, I'd have to be linguistically creative in a new way. As for the character, he's kind of like the sweeter twin of Ianto in Sheepshagger . He's natural innocence. Ianto is too, in his way, but I wanted to write a simpler innocence versus corruption story. Plus do some delving into shamanism. More than that, of course, but let's leave it there.
AMERICYMRU: The protagonist of Stump retreats to Wales after a disastrous experience in the Liverpool drug underworld. He seems to find the very place names soothing and reassuring. Is he returning to his "roots" and if so is Wales still a place where you can seek refuge from the urban maelstrom?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: In a way, yes, but don't confuse that with Wales being peaceful; it's kind of like finding a God - it's got everything to do with calm, and nothing to do with comfort. Rural Wales is a place of mud and death and shit and bone but it's also a place where connectedness is freely available and notions of re-birth declare themselves openly, and in that way, I find it immeasurably hopeful. Stump 's character retreats to a place that he remembers fleeing to as a child with his family, from his violent father. It's Alistair, in a sense, who rediscovers his roots; notice that he finds an inner strength to deny Darren as soon as they cross the border. It doesn't last long, but there's a flash of it. Alistair, in his way, saves the world - he's a placating influence on Darren, even tho neither of them know it. At least in Stump he is. There's great comic mileage in that double-act, I think.
AMERICYMRU: In Stump there's a violent denoument but it's not the one you expect - did you start this story with that in mind and with its resolution in mind? Were Stump and Wreckage originally one story in your mind or did Wreckage grow out of Stump?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: I wanted Stump to have a happy ending, so had a strong idea of what that would be, yes. And Wreckage did grow out of Stump although I knew that I wanted to explore those characters in greater depth. The first draft went much further; I was planning a section called something like 'Darren, His Antecedent', describing a fish climbing out of the primordial ooze. I didn't write it, on the advice of my editor.
AMERICYMRU: Wreckage is one of the funniest and most poignant books I have ever read. It seems to me that you created two of the finest comedy characters in literature since Falstaff (in Stump ) and wrote a sequel because we all wanted to hear more from them. Obviously the work has a more profound purpose. In what sense does Wreckage represent Liverpool today?
NAILL GRIFFITHS: Liverpool has just come out of it's European Capital of Culture year, so it's a changed city, in many ways, for both good and bad. The most noticeable change is in the general attitude; there's a renewed energy, an optimism, a new kind of buzz. But it's been the by-word for social and political decay for decades, and, given that it's Britain in miniature, what does this tell us? The UK's histories of colonial oppression and multi-culturality and slavery and defiance and everything else can be seen in the microcosm of Liverpool. In writing Wreckage, I didn't want to foreground any one of those narratives, but to look at them all, or as many as I possibly could. It's part of the fight against cliche, and neatness. A war in which each of us must play our parts. 
AMERICYMRU: Does Sheepshagger represent a conscious attempt to undermine Anglo-Welsh literary stereotypes?
NAILL GRIFFITHS: Without a doubt, yes. It's partly a reaction against the Enlightenment idea of Celtic peoples living lives of natural harmony and warmth; you know, 'let's not worry about these funny little people with their dancing and furry hats, they're all happy, they all link arms and sing going home from the mines to the hearth and a bowl of mam's cawl'. It's reductionist and self-serving and smug and undignified. Made by minds which can't see phthisis and poverty and self- and substance-abuse and loneliness and working twelve hours a day wresting spuds from rock only to be told on a Sunday that you'll be damned eternally for laziness. I chose the name Ianto partly as a nod towards the main returning character in Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley (well, less a nod and more of an abbreviated headbutt, really), which is symptomatic of this kind of Uncle Tom-ist nonsense. Stereotypes reduce, don't they? That's their job, to shrink in order to make certain people feel comfortable. They belong to prejudice, which is received hatred, and therefore a cliche of the most shrivelling kind. So, in Sheepshagger especially, I wanted to portray Wales as I know it; as an impossibly rich and wondrous and magical place which will fiercely fight back against any attenuation. Middle England hates, and is absolutely terrified by, the Other; I wanted to point out that their worst fears have been constructed by themselves and can be found three hours by train from London.AMERICYMRU: Your characters are very "warty" and real, unpolished and smelly like real people really are, and you write them doing awful things and full of failings and weakness but also respectfully, as though you're presenting them whole but not to be ridiculed. Would you agree with this and if so, is it intentional? Why?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: Yes, and yes. Why? Because I believe that dignity is not a conferred quality; it's innate in human beings. It's one of the most valuable traits we have, and is, sadly, crumbling. People aren't simply vessels for a single act or outlook, nor are they simply the results of linear causation, yet they're often perceived to be precisely that, none more so, in today's tabloid culture, than the kinds of people I write about. I don't agree with everything they say and do, nor do I always like them, but I believe that they should be allowed to develop free from authorial censure. That's not my job. I write against reductionism, so it's imperative that I write my characters in all their moods, explore all their loves and perversions and tendernesses and guilts. One review of my first novel, Grits, said that 'each episode recounted bears the stamp of authentic experience, and is driven by angry love', or something very like that. Couldn't've put it better meself.
AMERICYMRU: Your endings fit your characters so well - Runt has a "happy" ending, Stump suffers enough, Kelly+Victor and Sheepshagger are inevitable, Wreckage is also inevitable but very neatly avoids the morality tale. Do you have these in mind when you start writing or do they develop with the characters?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: Again, a bit of both. Sorry, that sounds like a cop-out. . . I have a strong sense of what the ending should be - Victor would die, Stump's feller would escape, etc. - but no concrete notions of how I would get there. Plastic notions, yes, amenable to moulding, but nothing rigid. A crap analogy; you have a blank wall, several different tins of paint, brushes of several sizes, a roller, a spraygun, etc. All of them are means towards a painted wall, but you don't know, before you start, how precisely you'll do it. See; told you it was a crap analogy. But it illustrates my point. I hope.
AMERICYMRU: Is there one thing you've done that you're more proud of than others, one that you love more than the others? What is it and why?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: Well, Grits saved me from myself, I guess; I was in something of a mess, before I wrote it, and, in fact, during much of it's writing. I was living as my characters were, but the writing about my experiences gradually overtook the 'homework', as it were. It's my most autobiographical, so I'm very fond of it. Stylistically, I like Sheepshagger , technically, K+V and Stump , linguistically, Runt . . . I don't know; the answer to the question 'what do you think is your best book?' is always 'the next one'. It needs to be. The one I'm about to start writing, called A Great Big Shining Star , will be better than all the others put together. I have to keep telling myself that.
AMERICYMRU: Do you have anything in particular you want to achieve as a writer, a particular goal or goals?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: Just to write and write and write until I die at a very old age. When I was younger, I used to think that the likes of Thomas and Behan and Fitzgerald and Byron and Shelley had it right; burn out, don't fade away, blaze half as long but twice as bright. Now that I've reached my early forties, miraculously it sometimes seems, I admire those who stoked the fire until the very last moment; Johnny Cash, Hardy, Bukowski, Burroughs. Funny that, innit?
AMERICYMRU: Who do you like to read? Who are you reading at the moment?
NIALL GRIFFITHS: America's producing the best writers now, in my opinion: McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Dan Woodrell, loads more. Much British stuff is parochial, dull, smug, irreparably middle-class, but of course there are exceptions. I read voraciously, always have; constant bedtime companions are religious tracts, volumes of nature writing, Renaissance and Jacobean tragedies. At the moment I'm juggling [Roberto] Bolano's 2666 , [Micheal] Braddick's God's Fury, England's Fire (a history of the English civil wars), Interrogations [ Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 by Richard Overy](a collection of interviews with the Nazi elite), an anthology of Gothic horror stories, and a book about the DeCavalcante Mafia family of New Jersey. It's becoming increasingly difficult to navigate my way around my house; there are towers of books everywhere.
Books by Niall Griffiths
Grits Cape, 2000 Sheepshagger Cape, 2001 Kelly &Victor Cape, 2002 Stump Cape, 2003 Wreckage Cape, 2005 Runt Cape, 2006 Real Aberystwyth (with Peter Finch) Seren, 2008 Real Liverpool (with Peter Finch) Seren, 2008 Ten Pound Pom Parthian Books, 2009
Neil Dymock in one of the cars along with
Wales players Lewin Nyatanga & Gareth
Bale.
1. What is "Baku or Bust?" and whose idea was this?
"Baku or Bust" is the name of a charity project. A number of Welsh Football Supporters are attempting in May to raise money for orphanages along the way. The idea is to drive from the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff through Europe to reach Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan in time to see Wales play the Azeris on 6th June 2009 in a Qualifier for the World Cup in South Africa. I initially had the idea from reading an article on two people who had driven from London to Mongolia in a charity rally and saw their route had taken them through A zerbaijan. Back in March last year, I drove to Luxembourg with a friend, Gareth Davis, to watch Wales play a friendly there and we talked about the possibility of driving to Azerbaijan. It started from here basically and has really taken off since then.
We started with one of two cars and around 4 or 5 people really interested, but after some advertising in the Wales fanzine I produce called 'The Dragon Has Landed', I started having one or two emails from curious Wales fans asking for more details. To be honest I was making up most of the answers to their questions at that stage as the idea was still on the drawing board, but since last Autumn it has really taken off and we now have over 30 Wales supporters taking part and over 10 vehicles.
2. You're raising funds for Gl and you're a trustee for them - for people outside Wales, what is Gl and what does it do?
Gl came about on a bus ride back back from a place called Valkeakoski in Finland in September 2002, where I had just seen Wales Under 21's lose 2-1 to Finland. Myself and two other Welsh fans, Gary Pritchard and Dylan Llewellyn were talking about our upcoming trip to Azerbaijan in the November and we decided to see if we could locate some orphanages we could help to promote the kind nature of Welsh Football fans. We found three to visit, raised over $2300 to donate and the rest as they say is history.
On our return, we decided to carry on fundraising and came up with the name Gl which means Goal in Welsh. We formed an informal charitable organisation and continued visiting orphanages, childrens homes and hospitals whenever Wales played abroad. We then decided to help underpriveledged children in Wales watch Wales play at the Millennium Stadium and terminally ill children, those suffering from Leukaemia and children who normally would not have the opportunity to see Craig Bellamy and co play, can now watch Wales. In October 2008, we applied for charitable status with the Inland Revenue and now have a charity number XT14176.
3. How did you get involved with this? Are you personally going on the drive?
I have been involved with Gl since its infancy and have been to all of the 30+ places Gl have visited in the last seven years, bar Moscow and Iasi, with Gl raising around $60,000 in this time. It has been a labour of love during this time, but totally worthwhile, with so many Wales fans involved with Gl, be it by coming along on an orphanage visit or simply buying a raffle ticket. I remember one guy won a tabl football game in a raffle at work and he brought it all the way to Azerbaijan to give it to an orphan. The Welsh Football team can be very proud of their fans, who aim to make a difference at every game. With the papers being sold containing stories of Craig Bellamy's spat with a fan in Portugal the other week, Gl were busy visiting two orphanages in Albufeira, enabling children at the homes to have dental treatment in 2009. The Welsh players are a great help to Gl though, from signing shirts we can use in raffles to having photos taken with children suffering from Leukaemia.
A lot of people ask me from time to time how and why we achieve what we do with Gl. Watching Wales around the world is a priveledge, you make great friends for life from all over Wales, travel to places most people have never heard of and have stories to tell that people wouldn't even think of making up. However the answer is simple, we can ! One of the people inspirational in obtaining souvenirs and prizes to raffle which helped raise the money to donate to those first three causes in Azerbaijan is no longer with us. Maralyn Olsen was a retired school teacher and Welsh Football supporter who did so much for Gl before she sadly lost her fight against cancer in January 2004. She has been a massive loss to Gl and Welsh Football in general. Gl continues with her spirit and those of other Wales fans no longer with us.
I am now one of four trustees the charity has and two of us, myself and Tim Hartley will be going on the drive. Duncan Jardine and Andy Hurst are the other two trustees. We have had so many people who have contributed to Gl though since 2002. Dylan Llewellyn, Gary Pritchard, Rob Santwris, Mark Ainsbury, have been major influences, the list goes on, many fans have all put in a tireless amount of work for the good name of Welsh Football Supporters.
Going back to BakuorBust I don't think Tim really thought I was serious when I mentioned driving to Azerbaijan, but he has and is proving a tremendous help in assisting me with the preparations and has raised over $1500 already. Everyone taking part has been a great help though and given me great confidence that this project will be a resounding success, especially Dave and Jim who have driven to Mongolia before and have the experience of border crossings by car. We aim to visit over 20 orphanges en-route to Baku and raise over $15,000 to spend on these good causes.
4. Have you ever done anything like this before?
No I have never thought about driving a very old car, which drinks oil by the pint over 3700 mile !!! Seriously though I have been involved in a number of Gl fundraising activities, including leading a team to run in Iceland in 2005 and organising a charity walk in London from the Oval where Wales first played in London to Orient where Wales last played. I have always enjoyed fundraising and have run a few times for charity in the past, including Chigaco in 1999.
5. Where are you all getting your cars from? What might they be? Have you got them yet? Got yours?
The first few cars were supplied by Dainton Brothers Garage based in Hengoed, just outside Cardiff. Gareth, Huw and Winstone Dainton have been a tremendous help in sourcing cars for us, refurbishing them and getting them through an MOT. Dial-a-Weld, Part Mart and King David Tyres have also supported Dainto Bros in helping get the cars in a driveable condition with half a chance of making it to Baku. While a special mention to Smart Graphics for designing the advertising that will be going on all the cars. I am driving a very old Peugeot 106, which has done 140,000 mile, while Tim will be driving a Toyota Rav4, which has over 120,000 mile on the clock. We have a red taxi in the shape of a 'London Black Cab', two people carriers and rumours are rife that one of the fund raisers is in negoatiations to obtain an Ambulance. We did have an offer of a Fire Engine as well but turned this down as there were more logistical negatives than positives to driving a Fireman Sam Fire Engine to Azerbaijan.
6. How will you do it, in teams? How will they be selected?
Most of the 'teams' have been 'self selected' as a group of friends taking part. A few individuals are taking part so I have matched them up with other team's. The biggest team is from Cardiff, with five driving in an old people carrier nicknamed Val. One team, Marc and Richard from North Wales have yet to find a car and the weekend visits to dodgy second hand car lots go on and you can read about on Marc's blog. www.conwytobaku.co.uk
7. How are you going to choose your routes? Will they all be the same or every car for itself?
The general route will be through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. We are planning to leave Cardiff on Friday 22nd May, but some of the cars may not leave until Monday 25th as Cardiff City or Swansea City may be playing in the Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley. If this happens and some of the other teams leave late, the plan is to meet up in Istanbul on the Friday evening before traveling together from here. In Georgia we are spending two days in Kutaisi, which is twinned with a city in Wales ( Newport ) and they will be holding a civic reception for us when we arrive.
8. Will you all meet and celebrate when you arrive? What plans do you have for that?
I am traveling to Azerbaijan for a week at the start of May, by plane not by car ! I will be meeting the President of the Azerbaijan Volunteers Union, Sebuhi Rzayev to discuss our plans to visit seven oprhanages in Qazax, Tovuz, Shamkir, Ganja, Goychay, Kurdamir, and Baku. While I will also be meeting Jon Patterson, an Ex-Pat who I met when Wales played there in 2002 and 2004. Between discussions with these two people I hope to organise a celebration party for Friday 5th June in Baku. During my week in Baku I will also be working as a volunteer in two or the orphanages we are helping to get a better understanding of how we can help these places and the children there. All the money raised by April the 30th for BakuorBust will be spent on items that the orphanages we visit, need. I will be ordering a lot of the supplies for orphanges in Azerbaijan during my week in Baku and we will then distribute ihem when we arrive in the country. For example there are 160 children suffering from mental disabilities at the Saray Orphanage just outside Baku and many have towels as diapers as the home can't afford new supplies. Gl will be donating fresh suppliers so the children can have some dignity.
An orphan at Saray Orphanage, Azerbaijan
9. What other fundraising activities does Gl conduct or contribute to?
Gl is always looking for funraising opportunities. I have already mentioned running in Iceland and walking in London as previous events. We have also had people running in London, New York, Dublin and Cardiff. One Wales fan cycled from Cardiff to Dublin, while another took part in the world famous Wicklow Bike Race. On April 12th Owen Williams will be swimming Llyn Tegid in Bala, while next year Andy Hurst hopes to run in a long distance event on every continent in the World. We have also set up online fundraising on a site known as Just Giving. We are hoping people with a Welsh background around the world will contribute $3 per person to our project. For example if just half the members of Americymru donate $3 each, this would raise over $1500. This can be done online at justgiving.com/bakuorbust .
10. How many cars do you think will make it?
I'd like to think they will all make it, but the law of averages tells me its unlikely. The combined mileage of these cars is well in the excess of one million and although they all have MOT's even new cars can break down at any time. We have various back up plans already in place and the basic idea is if a car breaks down and is not fixable within a timely and financial limit, we will arrange to have the car disposed off and the people driving those cars will jump in a fellow fundraisers car. However we have several difficulties to overcome for any of the cars to reach Baku. Right Hand Drive cars are not allowed in Azerbaijan, but we are hoping to obtain dispensation to take the cars in off the Azeri President, Ilham Aliyev. Plan B, is to leave the cars in Georgia and have a bus waiting at the Georgian / Azerbaijan border to take us to Baku. It is hoped whoever and wherever we leave the cars they will be used for good causes, even if it's for a technical college for budding Azeri or Georgian mechanics to practise on !
From the Page:-
"50 of Amazon vouchers to be won!"
"The National Library of Wales plans to create an online library of newspapers, journals, magazines, books and papers about Wales and the Welsh people. The project is called 'The Theatre of Memory' and it would make the printed record of Wales and the Welsh people freely available to be searched and read by anyone on the Internet. Its aim is to lay bare the memory of Wales so that it can be seen by anyone on the World Wide Web."
"The Library is conducting a survey of organisations and individuals to find out levels of interest and what you would like to see included in The Theatre of Memory. For your chance to win 50 worth of Amazon vouchers, complete the questionnaire and enter your name and email address at the end!"
"The questionnaire should take approximately five minutes to complete: all your responses will be treated in confidence and in accordance with the Market Research Society's Code of Conduct. Your completed questionnaire will be returned to an independent market research company, Scotinform Ltd, which has been commissioned to conduct this survey on behalf of the National Library of Wales."
GO TO THE SURVEY PAGE:-
ENGLISH
CYMRAEG
A Welsh author living in America was overcome by emotion twenty five years since leaving his homeland and became ludicrously patriotic, so decided to write a novel glorifying Wales. Peter Griffiths is a Welsh-speaking author from Cynheidre near Llanelli, moved to Denver, Colorado in 1972, but in the last few years has gravitated back to Wales.
Peter Griffiths said: In 1990, while driving from Heathrow to Bala, climbing the Berwyn from Llangynog, I distinctly remember being moved by the grandeur, and feeling ludicrously patriotic. How could I not write a novel glorifying Wales, its people, and its language? It would be aimed mainly at my circle people in the States, who go weak at the knees over Scotland and Ireland, but rarely over Wales.
The novel is called, Tongue Tied, and is set in the Tryweryn valley and the Rhondda. The novel considers how language has had an unifying and some times divisive role over the centuries. The author said: One is Welsh if one feels Welsh. The novel recognises the tension that arises at times between the majority of Welsh people who cant speak Welsh and the minority who can; and the divisiveness of the language in these instances is compared, with sadness, to its crucial unifying role over the millennia.
Tongue Tied is published by Y Lolfa on St Davids Day. The author now shares his time between Swansea and Denver. This is his first novel.
