To coincide with the Left Coast Eisteddfod in Portland Oregon on August 22nd 2009 the downtown Central Library will be holding a "Welsh Month". For further details and to RSVP ( if you are an Americymru member ) please go to this page:- Welsh Month Page . As part of the program authors Niall Griffiths and Penny Simpson will be presenting a reading/Q&A session at the library on Thursday August 20th between 12 and 2. To read more about both these unique talents see below. ADMISSION FREE

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....... MORE.

New Welsh Review, June 08 - [An] extravaganza where the real and the imagined take turn and turn about... sumptuously detailed and fantastical... [this novel is] at once full of disturbing delicacy, and at the same time [forceful]... [marked by its] humour, verve and hallucinatory strangeness.

Clare Morgan, Times Literary Supplement, 25/7/08 - Compelling... superb talent for storytelling and an almost Zola-esque delight in detailed and richly sensuous description of the material culture of both rich and poor. Wales Literature Exchange 2008 selection, www.walesliterature.org The 7ft plus heroine of Simpson's book The Banquet of Esther Rosenbaum contrasts strikingly with familiar fact-or-fiction cabaret personalities like Sally Bowles or Marlene Dietrich... Working for the most famous chefs and bakers of her day, [Esther] expresses both political and personal yearnings through her increasingly [fantastical] recipes, served to Jews and Gestapo alike... Esthers survival depends partly on her brilliant culinary skills, but also on her ability to pass as non-Jewish. It is not a natural ability; she adops a mans greatcot and top hat, beneath which she becomes increasingly emaciated. Simpson vividly conveys how the optimistic creator of Kiss-of-Hope biscuits hides, denies, and finally regains her larger-than-life identity.