A collection of essays entitled Fiction as a Hearing Aid by Ed Garland has won the 2018 New Welsh Writing Awards: Aberystwyth University Prize for an Essay Collection.
At a ceremony held at Hay Festival on Tuesday 29 May, the editor of the New Welsh Review and chair of the judges, Gwen Davies, described Garland's work as "an intelligent, rigorous, personal, humorous and compelling presentation of words as soundscape", going on to describe the writer as a 'citizen thinker'.
"This is a place where nationhood and communal ties help build up a writerly community and a sense of responsibility among both readers and writers towards where we live as well as making us acutely aware of those British and global issues that affect, reflect and challenge our values, which include tolerance of and support for difference."
In his first essay from Fiction as a Hearing Aid, Garland describes his hearing loss and interference connected to severe tinnitus, and how fiction helped him learn to change "the emotional response to...physical injury".
He receives £1,000 advance on an ebook deal, published under the New Welsh Review's book imprint New Welsh Rarebyte, plus a critique by the London literary agent Curtis Brown.
Garland is an MA student in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, which sponsors the prize and hosts the New Welsh Review. The awards are run in partnership with Curtis Brown, Gladstone's Library and Ty Newydd Writing Centre.