Hay Festival has announced the participants of Writers at Work 2025, a creative development programme for Welsh writers at Hay Festival this spring (22 May–1 June) with the support of Literature Wales and Folding Rock, 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.
Open to writers working in English and Welsh across genres – fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry – this year’s 10 successful applicants are:
- Rosy Adams
- DUKE AL
- Jade E Bradford
- Gosia Buzzanca
- Tom Cardew
- Gemma June Howell
- Esyllt Lewis
- Hattie Morrisson
- Rebecca Thomas
- Rhys Thomas
Writers at Work is a Hay Festival project supported by Literature Wales – the national company for the development of literature – and run by writer Tiffany Murray.
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, the Guardian’s Best New Novelists, and Creative Wales Award.
Established in 2016 to nurture Welsh talent writing in both languages, Writers at Work was paused during the Covid-19 pandemic. 2025 will mark its seventh year.
Hay Festival CEO Julie Finch said:
“As a charity Hay Festival exists to open access to creative inspiration around every corner. In this spirit, our spring Festival is a great convener of writers, curious readers and – crucially – creative opportunities such as our Writers at Work programme. We are delighted to unveil our 2025 participants: a snapshot of Wales’ rising writing stars who will experience a programme of activities tailored to their needs, guarding and growing our creative community for the future.”
Literature Wales Artistic Director Leusa Llewelyn said:
“We’re delighted to be working with Hay Festival again this year on this inspiring programme for some of Wales’ most exciting up-and-coming writers. This diverse cohort of writers represents a snapshot of the incredible talent we have here in Wales, and we’re excited to see where this important platform and development opportunity takes them next.”
Hay Festival runs its 38th spring edition in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, with more than 600 events over 11 days, 22 May–1 June 2025.
Discover the full programme online now at hayfestival.org/hay-on-wye.
Launching the best new fiction and non-fiction books, while sharing insights around global issues, the programme sees more than 600 artists, policymakers, pioneers and innovators take part from around the world.
Events offer something for all, beginning with the free Schools Programme, 22–23 May, and including a vibrant strand for families throughout.
Special projects and new initiatives in the programme include:
- The Platform spotlights young creative talent
- Hay Festival Green proposes innovative solutions to the climate crisis
- The new MUBI Cinema showcases storytelling on screen
- The News Review engages with the day’s top stories
- Hay Festival Sports Day returns on Wednesday 28 May
- South to North Conversations explores issues facing the Global South
- Debut Discoveries promotes new writing talent
- Matters of Taste demos spotlight great food writers and local produce
- Creative Industry Insights sessions engage budding young creatives
Nights at the Festival are given over to great music, comedy and entertainment, while a host of free pop-up activities and performances will amaze audiences between sessions.
Events take place across eight stages in the free-to-enter Festival site, which offers a range of spaces for audiences to explore and enjoy, including the Bookshop, Wild Garden, Make & Take Tent, a host of exhibitors and market stalls, cafés and restaurants, and the Family Garden where young readers can kick-start their creative journeys – plus immersive music performances all week at St Mary’s Church.
Collaborations with Arts Council England, Black British Book Festival, Pen to Print, Living Knowledge Network, Reaching Wider, and Inclusive Books for Children make this one of the most accessible Festival editions yet. And the Festival continues online with a selection of sessions streamed live throughout the 2025 event, continuing the Festival’s commitment to digital accessibility.
Hay Festival Writers at Work 2025 participant bios:
Rosy Adams is a poet and fiction writer from Powys. She was part of Literature Wales’ second cohort of Representing Wales writer development programme in 2022/23, which led her to set up a Community Interest Company to organise and fund on-going support for under-represented writers in Wales. She edited and contributed to (Un)common: Anthology of new Welsh Writing (Lucent Dreaming, 2024). Her writing has been published in The Lampeter Review, Lucent Dreaming Magazine, These Pages Sing, Gwyllion and Poetry Wales among others. She is in the final stages of a collection of contemporary short stories influenced by myth and fairytale, and she has a novel in development.
DUKE AL is a spoken word artist, published poet, hip-hop artist and creative practitioner. His latest collection Imagine We Trade Bodies With Sheep, was released by Lucent Dreaming in March 2025. His work has been featured in Go.Compare Six Nations 2025, FAW, Cardiff Rugby, Creative Cardiff, TNT Sports (Sport in Words for Black History Month on Sir Lewis Hamilton), BBC Wales, FujiFilm UK, Cardiff Metropolitan University, and BBC Scrum V for The Six Nations 2022.
Jade E Bradford is an author and communications and engagement professional based in South Wales, holding an MA in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has been published in Wasafiri, Breadfruit Magazine, and Rowayat. Her adult short story, Drifting, won first place in the 2024 Breadfruit Magazine Prize, while her YA short story, An Embarrassment of Janets, was highly commended in the 2023 Faber FAB Prize for Children’s Literature. Jade was selected for the 2023/24 Literature Wales Representing Wales cohort and the 2024 Black British Book Festival Writers on the Rise.
Gosia Buzzanca was born in Poznań, Poland. She began publishing short stories in 2002, before moving to the UK in 2008 and earning a Creative Writing MA with distinction. In 2022, she was the recipient of the W&A Working-Class Writers’ Prize. Her debut, a memoir, There She Goes, My Beautiful World, set in between Poland and Wales, will be published by Calon in October 2025. She now lives in Barry, South Wales and is working on her first novel.
Tom Cardew is a Welsh artist and writer. His writing has been published in several journals and Material Disturbances, an anthology of his prose poetry, was shortlisted for publication with Cheerio Publishing, Write Bloody UK, and Prototype Publishing in 2024. He was Fluxus Arts Projects laureate at Frac Bretagne and Domaine de Kerguéhennec in 2024 and won the Golden Aesop Grand Prix at the 24th Biennial of Humour and Satire in Art in 2019.
Gemma June Howell began writing dialect poetry from the Rhymney Valley, with her work featured on BBC Radio 4’s Tongue and Talk in 2021. She is the author of Rock Life: 17 Poems From the Welsh Valleys (2015) and Inside the Treacle Well (Hafan Books, 2009). Her debut novel, The Crazy Truth (Seren Books), was launched at Hay Festival in 2024, and formed the creative core of her PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. An editor at Honno Press and Culture Matters, Howell edited Land of Change: Stories of Struggle and Solidarity from Wales (2022). Her work has been published in The London Magazine, Poetry Wales and by Bloodaxe Books. As Director of Women Publishing Wales – Menywod Cyhoeddi Cymru – Howell champions the voices of women in publishing. Named one of Buzz Magazine’s Most Influential Women in Wales 2024, she continues to advocate for greater representation in literature.
Esyllt Angharad Lewis is an artist and translator from Craig-Cefn-Parc, exploring the relationship between visual and verbal languages. She has performed her work as Radio Cymru's Poet of the Month, at Aberystwyth Poetry Festival, at Transpoesie Festival, Brussels, and as part of Ulysses Shelter’s translation residency in Valetta, Malta. She won the Ifor Davies Award in the Pontypridd Eisteddfod in 2024 for her performance, Blobus a Phryderon Eraill (Jellyfish and Other Worries). Her Welsh adaptation of Anthony Shapland's novel, Lan Stâr (A Room Above a Shop) is being released in the spring, and she is also co-editor of Cyhoeddiadau'r Stamp.
Hattie Morrison is a Welsh writer whose work explores the limitations of storytelling, rural life and memory. Her writing has been published by the Guardian, New Welsh Review, her monologue works have been exhibited at Tate Modern, and her chapbooks are held at the Scottish Poetry Library. She was awarded the Young Welsh Writer of the Year prize by New Welsh Review for her essay Venus as a Spinster and she was part of Literature Wales’ Representing Wales cohort between 2022-2023. Last year, she was a recipient of A Writing Chance with New Writing North and Substack, Michael Sheen’s Mab Gwalia, and Faber. Born in Carmarthenshire in 1997, Hattie was awarded a full scholarship to study Fine Art at the University of Oxford, and later completed a Masters in Writing at the Royal College of Art. She is represented by Greyhound Literary Agencyand is currently pitching her first novel.
Rhys Thomas is a freelance magazine journalist and editorial consultant from Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, based between Laugharne, Glasgow and London. He writes for the i Paper, the Guardian, The Times, Telegraph, Time Out, GQ, The Face, VICE, New York Magazine, and many others. His journalistic work focuses on male wellness and mental health, as well as Welsh culture. He is currently working on novels, short stories and a non-fiction book, many of which will feature working-class Welsh culture, geographies, and people.
Rebecca Thomas is a senior lecturer in medieval history at Cardiff University, a Welsh-language novelist and essayist. She has published two historical novels for young adults: Dan Gysgod y Frenhines (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2022) and Y Castell ar y Dŵr (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2023). In 2022-3 she was appointed Welsh Writer in Residence for Bannau Brycheiniog National Park to work on a creative project responding to the climate and nature emergencies. This resulted in Anturiaethau’r Brenin Arthur, published by Gwsag Carreg Gwalch in 2024. Her first novel for adults, Y Tŵr, will be published by Sebra in April 2025. Her first essay, Cribo’r Dragon’s Back, won the inaugural O’r Pedwar Gwynt Essay Prize in 2021 and she has subsequently published further essays in O’r Pedwar Gwynt and in edited collections such as Hi/Hon (Gwasg Honno, 2024).
Hay Festival Writers at Work 2025 statements:
Rosy Adams said: “Being chosen for the Hay Festival Writers at Work programme is a dream come true! I’m looking forward to learning from some amazing writers and other industry professionals, and to seeing as much of the festival as I can. I’m passionate about supporting and developing the writing community in Wales and this is an unparalleled opportunity to make new connections, and to champion one another. I was born just up the road in Builth Wells, and my parents lived in Hay-on-Wye years ago, so in many ways this feels like a homecoming.”
DUKE AL said: “I feel extremely grateful to be a part of Hay Festival Writers at Work. What an amazing opportunity to grow as a writer, network and meet new people while having a laugh on the way! I am excited to immerse myself in the process, especially looking forward to developing my long-form fiction for my book PARASITE, which delves into the complexities and challenges of living with OCD. I’m also really keen to get involved in the scriptwriting workshop, as film is a big passion of mine!”
Jade E Bradford said: “I’m so overwhelmed by this opportunity. When I was an adorable, bookish, kid, my dad used to buy The Guardian every Saturday. Every year, they’d do a big feature on Hay Festival and I became obsessed with what seemed like an imaginary place filled with books and ideas. Now, what feels like 100 years later, I’m living in Wales, recently finished my first short story collection and I’m trying to make it as a writer in whatever small way I can. Being part of Hay Festival Writers at Work makes the impossible feel possible. I cannot wait to make connections, be inspired, find community and write, write, write.”
Gosia Buzzanca said: “It’s a true honour to have been selected as one of the Hay Festival Writers at Work 2025. As a writer and a person that made Wales her home more than a decade ago, Hay Festival was always a source of endless inspiration, a true highlight of each year and, until now, one of dream career summits. I am elated to join this group of incredible writers and to learn from them as much as from the programme of masterclasses, carefully curated by Tiffany Murray. Diolch o galon.”
Tom Cardew said: “I’m really looking forward to a busy and energising programme of workshops, conversations and network-building, along with the learning, dialogue and greater sense of community with other Welsh writers that will come from being a part of this year’s Hay Festival Writers at Work cohort.”
Gemma June Howell said: “I was absolutely blown away to be selected for the Hay Festival Writers at Work programme. After 20 years of quietly plugging away, it’s a real honour to be chosen. I’m craving focused time to develop both my poetry collection and my novel The Crazy Dream, alongside practical guidance to help navigate the next chapter of my writing life. This opportunity marks a pivotal moment in my career—offering the confidence and momentum I need to grow. The unique mix of writers and industry professionals creates a rare space for practitioner insight and creative collaboration—nurturing both the craft and the career.”
Esyllt Lewis said: “I feel very honoured to be part of the Hay Festival 2025 Writers at Work cohort. I can’t wait to meet the other writers and spend time honing my craft and learning from experienced writers in one of the best literary festivals in the world. As someone who writes in both Welsh and English, I feel excited to share and develop work in Cymraeg within the international setting of Gŵyl y Gelli.”
Rhys Thomas said: “Being selected for Hay Festival Writers at Work is a great confidence boost – I am very much at the beginning of my fiction career and having people see potential in what I want to do is highly motivating and valuable. I’m excited to form a support group of mentors and peers alike, that will enable me to tap into my authentic self as a person and fiction writer. I’ve also always wanted to go to Hay Festival, being able to do so and experience it fully without financial stress will be a real joy.”