Returning for its eleventh year, Literature Caerleon is a celebration of literature set within the beautiful grounds of Caerleon’s historic Priory Hotel. A pop-up bookshop will be provided by Chepstow Books.
11.00am – Alis Hawkins and M. F. Mathias in conversation
Alis Hawkins
Alis Hawkins grew up in Ceredigion and currently lives with her partner in the Forest of Dean. Her Teifi Valley Coroner historical crime series has twice been shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Historical Dagger. A Bitter Remedy, was Waterstones’ September 2023 Welsh Book of the Month and was long-listed for the 2024 CWA Gold Dagger for best crime book of the year, and shortlisted for the 2024 Historical Dagger. Alis loves cows, has a weakness for rucksacks and can’t resist an interesting fact.
M. F. Mathias
M. F. Mathias was born and brought up in north Pembrokeshire in the far west of Wales surrounded by myths and legends which is why he always wants to write about them. He’s done lots of things in lots of different places but then he found himself in yet another place of myths and legends called Caerleon. He is a proud democracy campaigner (for, not against) and loves procrastinating. The Once and Future, Now is his first novel.
12.00 – Rebecca F. John and Nicola Edwards in conversation
Rebecca F. John
Rebecca F. John grew up in Pwll, a small village on the south Wales coast. Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4Extra. In 2015, her short story The Glove Maker’s Numbers was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. She is the winner of the PEN International New Voices Award 2015, and the British participant of the 2016 Scritture Giovani project. In 2017, she was named on Hay Festival’s The Hay 30 list. Rebecca lives in Swansea with her partner, their two sons, and their dogs.
Nicola Edwards
Nicola Edwards is a PhD candidate at the University of Bangor and is a Creative Executive for Literature Wales. Nicola has worked as a teacher, a journalist, and has lectured on race and representation in the media for Race Council Wales. Her non- fiction writing has appeared in Wales Arts Review. This Thing of Darkness, her first novel, won the Michael Schmidt Prize at the Manchester Writing School.
2.30pm – Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards’s first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018) also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. He received the Troubadour Poetry Prize in 2022. He has been a judge for the National Poetry Competition and the Wales Book of the Year and a Literature Wales mentor.
3.10pm – Richard John Parfitt interviewed by Craig Austin
Richard John Parfitt
Richard John Parfitt was born in Cwmbran and raised in Newport. He spent his teenage years living in Toronto. In the early ‘90s he was a founding member of rock group 60ft Dolls. As a writer he has been shortlisted for the Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Theme or Setting (2019), and more recently, for The Wales Book of the Year 2024. His novel, Stray Dogs, is published by Third Man Books.
Craig Austin
Richard will be interviewed by Craig Austin the widely-published London based writer and vocal champion of his hometown of Cwmbran. He has recently finished writing his first novel, a secret history of the late-80s British new town experience.
4.00pm – Benjamin Woolley
Benjamin Woolley
Benjamin Woolley is an author and Emmy award winning presenter of TV documentaries. His books include the best-selling Queen’s Conjuror, about Elizabeth I’s astrologer John Dee; The Bride of Science, a biography of Ada Lovelace, the computer pioneer and daughter of Lord Byron; and The Herbalist, a study of Nicholas Culpeper, the rebel seventeenth century medic. He acted as historical consultant on Sky TV’s period drama Mary and George, starring Oscar-winner Julianne Moore. It was inspired by his most recent book The King’s Assassin, about Mary and George Villiers, the mother-and-son team who rose from obscurity to dominate the court of King James I of England and VI of Scotland.
5.00pm – Catherine Fisher and Robert Kingham interviewed by Jon Gower
The Three Imposters present Catherine Fisher and Robert Kingham as part of their on-going series – London Adventures.
The shades of long-dead writers in the London streets, random meetings, quests and journeys striking lines across the city, days of joy or woe, the past seeping through the pavements, the unexpected erupting through the fabric of everyday life, glimpses of the fantastic in the ordinary: London Adventures can be any or all of these
Catherine Fisher
Catherine Fisher is a poet and children’s novelist based in South Wales. Her novels Incarceron and Sapphique were New York Times bestsellers and Times Books of the Year. She has twice won the Tir na n-Og Prize and been shortlisted for the Costa, Blue Peter and Carnegie medals, and is the author of over thirty novels and four poetry collections. She has long been fascinated with the works of Arthur Machen and the wider culture of the 1890s.
Robert Kingham
Robert Kingham is one half of Minimum Labyrinth, a partnership with Rich Cochrane, under the patchwork flag of which he has written fiction (London Baroque), produced audio dramas, films (Pagan London, Bluebird and A Fragment of Life), and led unusual guided tours around London. He likes to relax by being a chartered management consultancy surveyor.
Jon Gower will interview Catherine and Robert. A former BBC Wales Arts and Media Correspondent, Jon is author of over forty books including most recently, The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea.
£10 day ticket, £20 Day & Night ticket to include Goldenhair
Tickets available on-line or from Caerleon Pos