Awduron a Siaradwyr Cadarnhawyd
Lemn Sissay OBE FRSL
Google “Lemn Sissay” and all the return hits will be about him. There is only one person in the world named Lemn Sissay Awarded the 2024 Hay medal for poetry Lemn Sissay OBE FRSL is also a playwright, memoirist, performer and broadcaster. His latest book “Let The Light Pour In” is a Sunday Times Best Seller. The paperback comes out in 2025. His autobiography My name is Why was a Number One Sunday Times Best Seller. In 2021 he helped select the work for Hold Still which also became a Sunday Times Bestseller. His Theatre adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy is a text on The National Curriculum. In 2022 he was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. In September 2024 Sissay was made honorary fellow of Mansfield College Oxford and 2020 he became Honorary Fellow at Jesus College Cambridge. Lemn was named MBE for services to literature, awarded by The Queen at Buckingham Palace and then he was named OBE for services to Literature and Charity, awarded by King Charles at Windsor Castle in 2023. He was chancellor of University of Manchester from 2015 to 2023. He is the only Guest Director of Brighton Festival two have been two years (2020 and 2021). In 2024 he was the curator of the first Ethiopia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. He has read poetry on stages throughout the world: from The Library of Congress in The United States to The National Theatre in Addis Ababa. From the Opera House of Dubai in The United Emirates to London Palladium in England. Sissay was the first poet commissioned to write for The Olympics in 2012. His Olympic poem Spark Catchers is a landmark poem on Queen Elizabeth Park today. His other landmark Poems are in Manchester London and Addis Ababa. There have been a few BBC TV documentaries about his life the latest is “The memory of me”. Listen to his desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 or “Origin Stories” his series on Superheroes relating to the care system. His Channel Four Documentary “Superkids” was nominated for BAFTA, Broadcast and Grierson Awards. Lemn Sissay has received seven Honorary Doctorates at Universities throughout UK.. He is presently Honorary Bencher at The Inner Temple. He is Honorary Chair of creative writing at The University of Manchester. Lemn was approached by The City of London and accepted Freedom of The City of London. To be approached in such a way is an honour which includes Nelson Mandela. He has been photographed by Steve McCurry, Rankin, Zoë Law and Ethiopia’s greatest living photographer Aida Muluneh. A painting of Lemn is in The National Portrait gallery. He is trustee of The Foundling Museum under its new director Emma Ridgway and he is founding trustee of The Gold From The Stone Foundation which supports Christmas Dinners for Care Leavers on Christmas Day.
Keith Cameron
A journalist since 1988, Keith Cameron is currently a contributing editor at MOJO. He previously worked for Sounds and New Musical Express, and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, The Times, the Sunday Times, Scotland On Sunday, Kerrang! and Q. He is author of Mudhoney: The Sound and the Fury from Seattle, acclaimed by Mark Lanegan as 'the definitive book on '90s Seattle music'.
Dominic Hames
Dominic Hames is a university civil engineering lecturer and one of the UK’s leading coastal engineers, responsible for the design of some of the country’s most important coastal defence structures. Born and raised in Newport, he is a passionate Newportonian with a deep commitment to the city’s history and heritage. A multiple award-winning academic author, he has published widely on subjects ranging from flooding and health to climate change and has delivered numerous talks on Newport’s past and present, including the redevelopment of Pill in the 1970s, the great flood of 1607, and the unique tides of the River Usk. His latest work, Mr Newport, is a biography of his father, Aubrey Hames – a beloved political leader and arguably the most influential figure in Newport’s public life during the latter half of the twentieth century. Aubrey’s legacy includes protecting Tredegar House from demolition, reshaping the city centre, and saving Newport from ill-considered development schemes. Written with both professional rigour and personal devotion, the book explores how Aubrey Hames helped shape the city’s modern identity, and how his influence continues to inspire his son’s passion for Newport today.
Paul Chambers
Paul Chambers is an award-winning haiku poet, and was the founding editor of the Wales Haiku Journal. To date he has published three full-length collections of poetry, and has had work appear regularly in the most celebrated English-language haiku journals and anthologies, including Modern Haiku, Presence, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron's Nest, and the Red Moon Anthology. A selection of his haiku has also been published in the celebrated North American poetry series, A New Resonance. Paul has contributed creative and critical material to the Times Literary Supplement, The Conversation, NHK World, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Review, Caught by the River, and the national Japanese newspapers, the Mainichi and the Asahi Shimbun. He has also worked with such organisations and institutions as the BBC, the Arts Council of Wales, the Centre for Environmental Humanities, Cornell University, and mental-health charity, Mind. He is a two-time winner of the Museum of Haiku Literature Award, and his individual poems have won the NHK Haiku Masters Award and the Golden Triangle Haiku Award. His 2021 collection, The Dry Bones won the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Distinguished Book Award – the most prestigious prize in the field of English-language haiku.
Dr Rowan Williams
Dr Williams is acknowledged internationally as an outstanding theological writer, scholar and teacher. He has been involved in many theological, ecumenical and educational commissions. He has written extensively across a very wide range of related fields of professional study - philosophy, theology (especially early and patristic Christianity), spirituality and religious aesthetics - as evidenced by his bibliography. He has also written throughout his career on moral, ethical and social topics and, since becoming archbishop, has turned his attention increasingly on contemporary cultural and interfaith issues.
Davina Quinlivan
Davina Quinlivan is the author of Shalimar: A Story of Place and Migration (Little Toller Books, 2022), shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment Prize 2023, and Possessions: A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity (September Publishing/Duckworth, 2026). She is currently Artistic Lead with Paper Nations, an Arts Council funded Creative Writing Incubator illuminating stories of colour in the South West. She is also a researcher within the English and Creative Writing Department at The University of Exeter and teaches a memoir course at The University of Bristol. Her writing has appeared in Caught by the River, Dazed Digital, Arty, Litro, The Lucy Writers, Another Gaze, Another Mag, Sight and Sound, Dark Mountain, The Clearing, The Conversation, The Willowherb Review and she spent ten years as a contributor to the Times Higher Education culture section. For several years, she ran the 'F: For Flânerie' series of talks on women, art and creativity at The Freud Museum. She is also the author of several academic books on cinema.
Jay Griffiths
Jay Griffiths is the author of several acclaimed works of non-fiction, including Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time; Wild: An Elemental Journey (winner of the inaugural Orion award and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize); Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape; Tristimania and Why Rebel. Her fiction includes Anarchipelago, and A Love Letter from a Stray Moon with a foreword by John Berger. She has written for The Future Library, Radiohead and the Royal Shakespeare Company and created a short film with Mark Rylance. Her most recent book is How Animals Heal Us. She is a wild skater, whenever the Welsh lakes freeze.
Norena Shopland
Norena Shopland is an author/historian specialising in the history of sexual orientation and gender identity. Her Forbidden Lives: LGBT stories from Wales (2017) is the first entirely historical work on Welsh LGBTQ+ history. Queering Glamorgan and A Practical Guide to Searching LGBTQIA Historical Records (Routledge, 2020) have become very popular as toolkits to aid people in research. A History of Women in Men’s Clothes (2021) explores gender fluidity. In 2021, the Welsh Government commissioned Shopland to deliver LGBTQ+ training to local libraries, museums, and archives in Wales, an outcome of which is The Welsh County LGBTQ+ Timeline Collection. She is a member of the International Committee on LGBTQ+ History Months. Shopland researches and writes Welsh history including, The Welsh Gold King, and Women in Welsh Coal Mining, a topic so popular over 80 talks have been delivered. For two years, Shopland has a monthly Welsh history column with Nation Cymru.
Sylvia Mason
Sylvia Mason was educated at Lady Margaret High School, Cardiff, The Western Theological College, Bristol, and Bristol University where she gained a BA and PGCE. While her son and daughter were young, she gained a Master’s degree with the Open University, her specialism being Victorian poetry. Her career was spent as a teacher of English in Bristol, Newport and the Valleys. Sylvia’s interest is in researching forgotten Newport women. Her first book, Every Woman Remembered: Daughters of Newport in the Great War, features accounts of the Newport women who died in service in WW1 and also others who did so much for the war effort in the town. Her second book Mary Frost: Wife, Mother, Chartist, looks at the female Chartists active in Newport in 1838/9. Her aim was to show the women and girls of Newport that they were part of one of the most important events in Newport’s history. She is delighted Her Story Theatre Group is spreading this message far and wide.
Odette Debono
Born and still lives in Newport, South Wales. Having left school with nothing to show for it, she later went on to study at the University of South Wales, winning the Tony Curtis Prize for Poetry, before completing an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. White Sheep is her first book.
Olivette Otele
Olivette Otele is a Distinguished Research Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS, University of London. She holds a Ph.D. from La Sorbonne, France. She is a former Vice President of the Royal Historical Society. She received an Honorary Degree from Concordia University, Canada. She was a judge of the International Booker Prize. Olivette is a regular contributor to the press (BBC, Guardian, Elle, GQ), a broadcaster (BBC, Netflix), a consultant for films and documentaries (Netflix, Disney+). She has written extensively on the histories of people of African Descent and colonial history. Her book African Europeans was shortlisted for the LA Time Book Prize in 2022. She also advises policy-makers, private companies and NGOs on colonial history and restorative justice (Welsh Government, Guardian newspaper, etc). Olivette lives in Newport.
Rajvi Glasbrook Griffiths
Rajvi Glasbrook Griffiths worked on the ‘Cynefin’ Report, making the teaching of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic histories mandatory in Curriculum for Wales. She is an organiser for the Caerleon Arts Literature events.
Luisa Jones
Luisa A Jones lives in South Wales. She writes to explore the complex, messy truths of the human condition, with flawed and relatable characters you’ll root for from the first page. Her first historical novel in The Fitznortons series, The Gilded Cage, was released by Storm Publishing in 2023, followed by a sequel The Broken Vow in 2024. She is currently writing a series for Storm Publishing, set during the Second World War, What We Left Behind” released in March 2026.
