Books from Wales - Seren News - July 2011

	Seren News - July 2011 Graham Mort scoops the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2011 Graham Mort wins the Edge Hill Short Story prize 2011 Graham Mort author of Touch has won the prestigious Edge Hill Short Story Prize for 2011. He was announced winner at Blackwells Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, London last night. Graham was shortlisted with authors such as, Michele Roberts, Polly Samson, Helen Simpson and Tom Vowler. Mort's collection includes a Bridport prize-winning short story "The Prince". Graham is currently in Uganda and was unable to collect his £5,000, PennyThomas (Fiction Editor at Seren) accepted the prize on his behalf. "A true pleasure from first page to last." New Welsh Review No win for Pascale Petit at the Wales Book of the Year 2011 Commiserations Pascale Petit! Unfortunately Pascale didn't win last night's Wales Book of the Year 2011. Petit's collection of poetry What the Water Gave Mewas on the short list with Cloud Road by John Harrison and Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds. Cloud Road (Parthian) won the £10,000 prize. What the Water Gave Me was on the short list for the T S Eliot Prize 2010. "Pascale's poems are as fresh as paint, and make you look all over again at Frida and her brilliant and tragic life." Jackie Kay,  The Observer   More Good News! Seren poet Ellie Evans has won first prize in Sentinel Literary Quarterly online magazine's competition with her poem 'The Living Business of a Badger'. Ellie's exhilirating first collection,   The Ivy Hides the Fig Ripe Duchess,  is out now from Seren. Latest Titles Evan Walters: Moments of Vision edited by Barry Plummer. Foreword written by Charlotte Church Evan Walters (1893-1951) is perhaps the great hidden secret of Welsh painting in the twentieth century, an outstanding artist who awaits discovery beyond Wales. This book presents, for the first time, a generous selection of colour reproductions of his paintings - portraits, landscapes, still lives - with a biographical essay on the artist. Paperback £12.99   ISBN: 9871854115423   The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness. Once ‘the Paris of the East’, Bucharest in 1989 is a world of danger, repression and corruption, but also of intensity and ravaged beauty. A young English student with a damaged past and an uncertain future arrives in Bucharest to take up a job he never applied for and whose duties are never made clear... “... an engrossing debut novel”  Time Out London ****   Book of the Month – Buzz Magazine Oxford Times***** Click HERE for his online interview with Oxford Times Paperback £8.99   ISBN: 9781854115416 Real South Pembrokeshire by Tony Curtis. The Real Series is moving to west Wales with a new volume focused on Tenby and its hinterland. Poet, past resident and frequent visitor Tony Curtis roams south Pembrokeshire, from the coastal resorts of Tenby and Saundersfoot, west to the surfers of Stackpole and Barafundle and north to the Landsker, the cultural boundary between English speaking south Pembs and the Welsh speaking north. Paperback £9.99   ISBN: 9781854115379   Coming Soon Writing King Kong by Robert Seatter From an elliptical self-help manual to a telephone party line where we become ‘an accidental spy’ on another life via the ambivalent comfort of a drunken night singing hymns and the elusive proximity of family tree. Writing King Kong explores the way we write the world, and reinvent it both for our own development and delusion.  Publication July 2011   Paperback £7.99   ISBN: 9781854115454  Second Chance by Sian James  Kate Rivers has it all; London life, successful acting career, and caring lover Paul. So why, when she is unexpectedly recalled to the Welsh village where she grew up, are both her past and her present such a struggle to come to terms with? First published in 2000, this classic tale is told with skill and sympathy by novelist Sian James. Publication July 2011   Paperback £8.99   ISBN: 9871854115430 Jonah Jones: An Artist’s Life by Peter Jones Sculptor, painter, letter cutter, stained glass artist, novelist, academic and administrator; Jonah Jones (1919-2004) was a twentieth century renaissance man. Born near Newcastle into a family of miners he became a librarian before reluctantly volunteering for a non-combatant role in the Medical Corps during he second world war. After the war, he fulfilled his dream of settling in Wales and began his 'on the job' education as a sculptor and letter cutter. Publication July 2011   Hardback £14.99   ISBN: 9781854115560   Meet the Author Saturday 4th June - 27th November 2011: Following intense preperation, Tim Davies unveiled his installation at the Venice Biennale. His exhibition and 2 new site responsive works made in Venice especially for Wales' presentation at the Venice Biennale of Art. Monday 11th July – 29th July: Ken Elias, Ceri Thomas Thin Partitions and Heather Eastes exhibit in Cardiff at the Senedd Gallery from 11th - 15th July and Futures Gallery Pierhead 4th-29th July. Open Monday to Saturday 10.30 - 16.30 National Assembly for Wales, Cardiff Bay www.assemblywales.org Saturday 16th July, 11am: Patrick McGuinness discusses his first novel, The Last Hundred Days. Clwb Canol Dre, Gwyll Arall (Another) Festival Friday 15th - Sunday 17th. Visit Palas Print for more information Saturday 16th July: Latitude Festival.  The Captain’s Tower: Seventy Poets Celebrate Bob Dylan at Seventy the book's editors Phil Bowen, Damian Furniss and David Woolley, will be joined by contributors to the book to read a selection of the poetry. Saturday 16th July - 10th September 2011: Brecknock Museum & Art Gallery will be hosting 'Bog-Mawnog', an exhibition of new Arts Council of Wales funded work by artists Elizabeth Adeline, Lin Charlston, Kirsty Claxton, Deborah Aguirre Jones, Christopher Meredith and Pip Woolf. Their work is in response to an area of eroding peat, on Pen Trumay, started by a mountain fire in 1976. Wednesday 20th July 7pm: Paul Henry 'Workshop' at Bookish, Crickhowell. 'The Paint in the Pen' This workshop will consider the imagist and the martian schools of poetry before encouraging a visual approach to writing, You will look at short verse forms, ranging from haiku to englyn, as a means of helping you to wirte economically but with resonance. Thursday 28th July, 6-7pm: Pascale Petit reads from her latest collection What the Water Gave Me at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. In association with the Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera exhibition. 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1TJ info@pallant.org.uk 01243 774557 www.pallant.org.uk Wednesday 3rd August, 7pm: Paul Henry 'Workshop' at Bookish, Crickhowell. 'The Power of Memory' - The challenge of writing out of the well of memory, You will look at poems by Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, exploring techniques for making the past urgent again and avoiding sentimentality. Poem of the Month Writing King Kong by Robert Seatter It’s where I stop in my daily walk, at the corner of 5th Avenue, 33rd and 34th St., budge that obstacle against my daily sun, blink away its shadow.  The Empire State Building – just a giant toy, a large crick in my neck. A version of that ceaseless night train clattering along its broken tracks… another train, another robbed and sleepless hour. All the things that elude me stay in my mind, stick to my pen. Love given is forgotten, a bed I lie on to dream my dreams of somewhere else, but that girl in the penthouse, on Hollywood Blvd., with her faraway small teeth that make her faraway perfect smile, sharp as a photograph, I could carry forever in my suit breast pocket; that elusive novel inscribed with gold letters, ‘Merian C. Cooper’ along its spine, which waits in the bookstore on 33rd East, 17th St., it never flickers out inside the dark; or that sleep of mine… So I’ll move his black arms to open the latch of her doll’s house window, push the tallest tower into a puff of dust, or – before that – make this detour to twitch the train off its airfix bridge. Now there’s sleep and sky and her perfect smile for me.  Could I write it any better? To view the rest of this poem click HERE, and see our new ‘View Extract Pages’ found on the cover image. Follow Seren Like Seren News? Why not forward this newsletter to a friend or suggest that they email us to be added to the monthly newsletters, keeping up to date on all events, prizes, new titles and news from Seren. Feedback welcome, please contact us on 01656 663018 or by email seren@serenbooks.com