Writers at Work
Writers at Work 2024 is a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye with the support of Literature Wales, funded by Arts Council of Wales.
Offering a fully-programmed ten days of creative development opportunities, Hay Festival Writers at Work allows the selected writers to engage in Festival events, attend workshops with publishers, agents and, crucially, with established international artists.
Participants to date have achieved a spread of award wins and shortlistings, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize, Wales Book of the Year, The New Welsh Writing Award, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Wales Media Award, Welsh Rising Star Award, and Creative Wales Award.
Open to writers working in English and Welsh across genres – fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry – this year’s 10 successful applicants are:
Dylan Huw
Dylan Huw is a writer, critic and curator living in Caernarfon. His writing and collaborations with artists take myriad forms, often guided by interests in translation and vocabulary-making, experimental documentary media, and gay and queer histories. He is a former Future Wales Fellow (2022-3), editor of the Artes Mundi 10 journal, and a contributor to e-flux Criticism and Frieze, among others.
Hammad Rind
Hammad Rind is a multilingual Welsh-Pakistani writer and translator. His debut novel Four
Dervishes (Seren Books, 2021) was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award. In 2022, he translated Knotted Grief by Indian poet Naveen Kishore into Urdu (Zuka Books).
He was part of the 2023 cohort of the Representing Wales programme by Literature Wales. His stories and articles have appeared in various publications, including The Aleph Review, The Madras Courier, Y Stamp, Poetry Wales, and James Joyce Broadsheet. Hammad holds a BA in English and Persian literature from the Punjab University, Lahore, and an MA in film making from the Kingston University, London. A passionate language enthusiast, he teaches Persian and Urdu, and has led workshops on creative writing and Eastern literature. He is currently working on his second novel.
Isabel Adonis
Isabel Adonis was born in London to West Indian and Welsh parents. She was raised and educated in London and north Wales. She is a writer and artist and lives in north Wales. Her artwork has been exhibited online at The Weavers Factory of Uppermill Manchester and at the Mostyn in Llandudno. She won the Non Fiction Category at Wales Book of the Year in 2023 for her memoir, And...a Memoir of My Mother.
Jessica George
JL George (she/they) was born in Cardiff and raised in Torfaen. Her fiction has won a New Welsh Writing Award, the International Rubery Book Award, and been shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Short Story Award. Her first novel, The Word, is published by New Welsh Rarebyte. In previous lives, she wrote a PhD on the classic weird tale and played in a glam rock band.
Joshua Jones
Joshua Jones is a queer, neurodivergent writer and artist from south Wales. He co-founded Dyddiau Du in Cardiff, a library and artspace led by and for LGBTQ+ and Disabled communities. He was the creative editor for the Room/Ystafell/Phòng (Parthian Books, 2023) anthology, celebrating queer voices from Wales and Vietnam.
His visual art considers the physicality of text and poetics through installation - often incorporating collage, found objects, sound and text. He also occasionally releases poetry and music under the name Human Head, and collaborates with Howl Hubbard in Howl&Jones. Local Fires (Parthian Books, 2023) is his first book, and was recently shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.
Katie Munnik
Katie Munnik is a Canadian writer living in Wales. Her debut novel The Heart Beats in Secret was a USA Today Bestseller, and her most-recent novel, The Aerialists, was Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month in April 2023. Her prose and poetry have been published in the UK, the USA and Canada.
Megan Angharad Hunter
Megan Angharad Hunter is an author and screenwriter from Penygroes, Dyffryn Nantlle living in Cardiff. Since graduating in 2022 with a degree in Welsh and Philosophy, she has been working as an author and children's book editor. tu ôl i’r awyr, her debut novel for young adults won the Wales Book of the Year award in 2021, and her second novel, Cat, was published as part of the award-winning Y Pump series.
She won the Urdd prose Crown in 2020/21 and more recently co-led a creative writing course for d/Disabled writers alongside poet Bethany Handley. She's currently co-editing an anthology of Welsh d/Disabled writers which will be published in 2025 by Lucent Dreaming. In 2023, Megan took part in the Mathrubhumi Festival of Letters in India before contributing to a panel discussion on accessibility in the publishing industry at the London Book Fair. She was among last year’s Representing Wales cohort, during which Astronot yn yr Atig was published, her first book for children which has been shortlisted for the 2024 Tir na n-Og award. Megan will also be attending a residency in Ljubljana, Slovenia this year as part of the Ulysses' Shelter programme. Writing in both her native Welsh and in English, her stories are mostly for children and young adults, discussing themes such as mental health, d/Disability and sexuality.
Rachel Dawson
Rachel Dawson is from Swansea and lives in Cardiff. In 2020 Rachel won a New Writer's Bursary from Literature Wales, and she was mentored by Rebecca F. John. Neon Roses, her debut novel, was published by John Murray Press in 2023. It is a lesbian love story set against the backdrop of the politically and culturally turbulent 1980s. She is inspired by the resilience of our queer ancestors, and the joy of loving other women. The Ghostly Cruiser, a short story about rural Wales, queer heritage and the hanky code, was featured in Unreal Sex, an anthology published by indie press Cipher. She is currently working on a second novel exploring queer parenthood and a love for history.
Taylor Edmonds
Taylor Edmonds is a poet, writer and creative facilitator from Barry. Her work explores themes of womanhood, identity, connection, nature and empowerment. Taylor’s debut poetry pamphlet Back Teeth is out now with Broken Sleep Books. She was the 2021-22 Poet in Residence for the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. She has received a Rising Stars Award from Literature Wales and Firefly Press for her writing for young people. Taylor is currently working on her debut YA fiction novel.
Zoë Brigley
Zoë Brigley is the author of three books of poetry published by Bloodaxe: Hand & Skull (2019), Conquest (2012), and The Secret (2007). All three are UK Poetry Book Society Recommendations and together they have won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, were longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 40, and were Forward Prize commended.
Her writing appears in publications like Australian Book Review, Chicago Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Poetry Ireland Review, Orion, Poetry Review, PN Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Copper Nickel, and Waxwing. She became editor for Wales’ leading poetry journal Poetry Wales in 2021, and she is now Poetry Editor for Seren Books jointly with the poet Rhian Edwards. With Kristian Evans, she co-edited 100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren 2021), and together they founded MODRON: Writing on Nature and the Ecological Crisis. She teaches in semester time in the United States at the Ohio State University. At Writers at Work, she will be working on her fiction.
