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Seren News - June 2012 Prize nominations keep rolling in for Seren
In the past three weeks Seren have been celebrating prize nominations from around the country. The Wales Book of the Year 2012 shortlist for fiction includes two Seren authors, Robert Minhinnick and Patrick McGuinness for the most prestigious literature prize in Wales.
| Minhinnicks The Keys of Babylon is a collection of linked stories about people migration, set in countries around the world, the main characters from which are brought together in a final story which looks at their lives on the same day. A story from the book was shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Bank Short Story Prize earlier this year, and was also long-listed for the Edge Hill Story Prize 2012 . |
| McGuinnesss novel, The Last Hundred Days is a story of a young Englishman abroad, caught up in the final days of the Ceausecu regime in Romania. The book is on the shortlist for Desmond Elliott Prize 2012 along with Grace McCleen and Rachel Joyce. The winner will be announced on the 28th June. Patrick has been nominated for five prizes since the release of his debut novel: The Man Booker Prize 2011 (long-listed); 2011 Costa Best First Novel Award (shortlisted); Desmond Elliot Prize 2012 (shortlisted); Wales Book of the Year 2012 for best fiction (shortlisted) and Authors Club Best First Novel Award 2012 (shortlisted). |
Keep checking the Seren website, Facebook or Twitter for updates on how both authors get on in the next couple of weeks. All of us here at Seren are enjoying the celebration parties nearly as much as Patrick and Robert!
Diamond Jubilee Offer
To mark the Queen's Jubilee, we thought we'd celebrate the work of writers who, over the past sixty years, have made significant contributions to the cultural life of Wales.
We've selected six books by six distinguished veteran authors, which you can buy for 6 each (+ p&p) from our website over the course of the double bank holiday.
Emyr Humphreys The Woman at the Window
Mavis Nicholson What did you do in the War, Mummy?
Dannie Abse There was a Young Man from Cardiff
Ruth Bidgood New and Selected Poems
Tony Conran Eros Proposes a Toast
Dai Vaughan Totes Meer
This offer will be from 9am Monday 4th until 9pm Tuesday 5th June 2012.
New Titles Out Now
| After Brock by Paul Binding Paul Bindings After Brock , is a story of Pete, a talented and intelligent schoolboy, though an outsider in both home and school life. One December night he meets Sam, an attractive and flamboyant boy, but something of a misfit, with whom his infatuation is instant. They begin a tempestuous friendship seeking a world removed from the difficulties of home life: Sams alcoholic mother and Petes frayed relationship with his unappreciative family. ISBN: 9781854115683 Paperback: 8.99 |
| Witch by Damian Walford Davies A striking portrait in verse of a small town in rural England struck by the witchcraft panic of the 17th century. The poems in this collection are dark spells, compact and moving: seven sections, each of seven poems, each of seven couplets, are delivered by those most closely involved in the 'making' of a witch. ISBN: 9781854115799 Paperback: 8.99 |
Forthcoming Titles
| Poet to Poet: Edward Thomass Letters to Walter de la Mare by Judy Kendell (ed) This collection of letters from Edward Thomas to Walter de la Mare amounts to over three hundred, running from 1906 to 1917. Illuminating and insightful, inspiring and poignant, they give a moving account of the growing trust and influence between these two poets; including some fascinating biographical detail and illuminating insights into their composing practices, their close and changing friendship and their special influence on each other. ISBN: 9781854115805 Paperback: 14.99 |
| Keidrych Rhys: The Van Pool by Charles Mundye (Ed) Keidrych Rhys was one of the most influential writers in Wales in the 40s and 50s who counted Dylan Thomas, Glyn Jones, Vernon Watkins, Emyr Humphreys, Alun Lewis, RS Thomas and many others among his circle of friends and literary acquaintances.This book brings together The Van Pool (Faber, 1942), Rhys's only poetry collection. ISBN: 9781854115829 Paperback: 12.99 |
| The Mind/Body Problem by Katha Pollitt TheBritish edition ofthe prize-winning book of poetry by the renowned American poet and essayist, Katha Pollitt. Informed by a sensibility both keenly political and artfully subversive, she touches on such subjects as Lives of the 19th Century Poetesses andCollectibles. In revisionist tales from the Bible,female characters like Martha and Lots Wife get the last word, while otherpieces, suchas the title poem,hinge on philosophical questions that evoke paradox. ISBN: 9781854115744 Paperback: 8.99 |
| Lightning Beneath the Sea by Grahame Davies Already well-known for his prizewinning Welsh-language poetry and fiction, and for his scholarly non-fiction, Grahame Davies has now produced his first collection of poems in English. Using a native warmth and an intimate, conversational tone, his poems are as concerned with character and relationships as they are with wider cultural matters. ISBN: 9781854115751 Paperback: 8.99 |
| Big Low Tide by Candy Neubert * *SUMMER READ* * A small island stands in the channel, barely changed by the tides. On its surface, the islanders go about their daily lives aware that its not possible to make a move undetected here, where everyone knows everybody else; where the neighbours will always notice, and judge. They know this, but they may have forgotten that its always possible to leave. ISBN: 9781854115836 Paperback: 8.99 |
Hay Festival 2012
Meet the Author
Poem of the Month
'Witch'
Were in Domesday: meadow,
fallow, plot and gravel pit,
flintwork church a little to the east;
Great House and cherry grove;
damson orchards blemishing
the light; the river slick
with fish; those millsails beating
on the pent-up pond. Beyond
lies corn-earth draining
to the sea. Even on rafty days,
keen eyes can see five spires
Gods needles tacking up the dark.
My garden borders on the deadfold
where they murder down the lambs.
Witch is the title poem taken from Damian Walford Davies's new collection Witch
