Swansea & District Writers Circle (SDWC)

A group of people from all walks of life and backgrounds, who are passionate about writing.

5 May 2021, 8pm, Jeff Murphy

Written by Website Admin. Posted in Guest speaker

Our speaker in May 2021 is award-winning screenwriter, author and composer, Jeff Murphy.

Jeff won a BAFTA for his work on the successful detective show Hinterland and was recently nominated for a second screenwriting Bafta, for the same Hinterland show.

Two feature films One Way to Denmark and Justine were completed in 2019. Fairytale, another feature has joined them 2020. Justine was nominated for BIFA (British Independent Film Award).

Jeff was also screenwriter and producer on the critically acclaimed television crime series, Hidden, which was produced by Jeff's Cardiff-based company Severn Screen (with 8 Episodes/BBC 4/All3Media). Jeff founded and creatively ran Severn Screen from 2009 to 2018, where in addition to his work on Hidden, he wrote/developed and/or produced One Way to Denmark (with BBC Films), The Passing (S4C), and was creator/screenwriter in charge of development of a wide range of feature film projects.

His book on boxer Johnny Owen, published by Random House, has been adapted by Jeff for the screen, was elected the Sunday Times Sports Book of the Month and listed for the William Hill Sportsbook of the year.

A new book Welcome to Valleywood, about a lifetime living with Autism will be written to completion in 2021. A new collection of music, song and poetry, recorded
at Colour Field Studios, Welcome Bay, New Zealand, is due out in July.

Jeff will talk to the Circle via Zoom at 8pm on Wednesday 5 May 2021 (please note the start time is later than usual).

If you would like to attend as a guest, please contact our Secretary: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For more information about Jeff's work, click here

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April's Guest Speaker

Written by Tony Alexander. Posted in Guest speaker

Rob Shearman

Rob talked about the short story at our Swansea District Writers’ Group meeting on 7th April at 7:00pm.

Robert Shearman has written six short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize, and four British Fantasy Awards. He began his career in the theatre, and was resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough; his plays have won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award, and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. A regular writer for BBC Radio, his own interactive drama series The Chain Gang won two Sony Awards.

But he is probably best known for his work on Doctor Who, bringing back the Daleks for the BAFTA winning first series in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. His latest book, 'We All Hear Stories in the Dark', is a strange mix of modern day Arabian Nights and a 'choose your own adventure' game, in which the reader has to find their way through a maze of 101 stories in order to save the hero's wife from the dead; it is available from PS Publishing.

Find out more: https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_Shearman

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3 February 2021: Niall Griffiths

Written by Website Admin. Posted in Guest speaker

Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool to a Welsh/Irish/Romany lineage. He's been a labourer, a barman, a server of fish and chips, a burglar, a farmhand, a tree feller, a factory worker and many other things too tedious to relate. Now, he's a full-time writer, living at the foot of a mountain in mid-Wales, with seven novels published, several works of non-fiction and more short stories and radio plays and travel pieces and reviews than he cares to, or possibly even can, count.

He has won the Wales book of the year award twice: in 2004 for his fourth novel, 'Stump', and again in 2020 for his latest work, 'Broken Ghost'. A film adaptation of his third novel, Kelly+Victor, won a BAFTA, and he's now working on the screenplay for his sixth novel, 'Wreckage'.

To find out more, see Niall's website at: www.niallgriffiths.com

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3rd March 2021: Professor John Goodby

Written by Tony Alexander. Posted in Guest speaker

Wednesday 3rd March 2021

Our guest speaker in March was poet, Professor John Goodby, Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University and formerly a lecturer in creative writing at Swansea University.

He describes himself as a persona non grata from Birmingham, who is both an expert in Irish poetry and Dylan Thomas. He is the author of The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: Under the Spelling Wall (2013) and editor of the centenary edition of Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems (2014).

A winner of many poetry prizes, his work has been described as “mischievous” and “faithfully subversive”.

He asked the members to chose one of five poems for him to read at the meeting. Members chose 'The Uncles', which John said was by far his most successful poem, winning the Cardiff International poetry competition in 2006, being featured in many anthologies and becoming a set text for AS level English Literature.

 

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2 December: Richard Lewis Davies

Written by Howard Betsworth. Posted in Guest speaker

Richard Lewis Davies is one of the founding partners of Parthian. It was established in 1993 to publish his first novel, "Work, Sex and Rugby", and has since developed into a leading independent publisher based in Wales. Parthian's focus is on Welsh writers working in English, while also assembling a carnival of voices from many languages and cultures. Richard has been involved in the literary scene in Wales since 1990 and is the current commercial director of Parthian and the Library of Wales series.

In addition to publishing, Richard has a parallel career as a creative writer. His novels include "Tree of Crows" and "My Piece of Happiness", and he has also published a selection of literary essays "As I Was a Boy Fishing" and a critically acclaimed selection of stories "Love and Other Possibilities".

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