From Mold to Pontypridd, this year’s cohort are based across Wales, and write in multiple languages such as Welsh, English and Bangla. They also write in a variety of genres and forms such as fantasy, horror, poetry, and graphic novels and for audiences ranging from 4-18 years old. The 14 of them offer a wide range of perspectives, styles and creative approaches, but all share the same enthusiasm for original ideas and passion for inspiring young audiences. Over the next 12 months, they will be looking to achieve their individual goals which range from completing their manuscript, to developing blueprints for school workshops, to hooking a literary agent and seeing their work published.
Jade E. Bradford
Jade Bradford is an author and communicator who currently lives by the sea in Barry, with two striped cats and one striped human. Best described as being from “all over the place”, Jade was born to one Jamaican and one Bajan parent and raised in and around the Home Counties. She spent a decade in east London before relocating to south Wales in 2020. Jade has a Masters Degree in Creative Writing and has had writing published in Wasafiri and featured in a Photoworks “Festival in a Box” and several online outlets. Outside of her writing, Jade works full-time in social housing. She is passionate about social justice and allowing marginalised voices to have the freedom to live ordinary lives in her work. Jade is dedicated to writing literary short fiction for all ages, and proper representation of black women in stories. Her ambition is to create characters her 15-year-old self would relate to. Jade took part in Literature Wales’ Emerging Writers programme, sponsored by The Rhys Davies Trust, in 2021 and the Stories for All programme in 2022.
Jessica Doyle
Jess Doyle is a writer of of horror and fantasy fiction. Her most notable publications include the novelette M.I.C.H.A.E.L. and spooky stories in The Third Corona Book of Horror Stories and Dark Lane Anthology VII. Jess is active in the online horror community with publications in Ink and Bone Press, Coffin Bell, Molotov Cocktail, Horror Scribes, Zeroflash and Idle Ink. She also occasionally dabbles in poetry.
Jess is especially interested in writing for young adults and is currently working on a graphic novel. She is a neurodivergent writer and a big fan of visual storytelling.
Taylor Edmonds
Taylor Edmonds is a poet, writer, and creative facilitator from Barry. Her debut poetry pamphlet Back Teeth is out now with Broken Sleep Books. Taylor was the 2021-2022 Poet in Residence for the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, creatively exploring the causes of the Well-being of Future Generations Act.
Her work explores themes of womanhood, identity, connection, nature, and empowerment. She is driven by improving the accessibility of creative writing to communities and championing the positive benefits of writing on individual’s wellbeing.
Osian Grifford
Osian is an illustrator, a writer with an interest in social themes, and workshop facilitator originally from Tregaron, Ceredigion. He has been working in the arts since studying English and Creative Writing at Cardiff Met University, before then achieving a BA in Illustration at Cardiff School of Art & Design. He has been living in south Wales since. The majority of Osian’s work deals with narrative illustration – children’s books and graphic novels, which vary in themes from re-imagined local folk stories, mental health, Welsh media, children with struggles at home, dystopian science fiction, and illustrations of Welsh historical events.
Bethany Handley
Bethany Handley (she/her) is a writer and disability activist living in Pontypridd. Her poetry has been published in POETRY, Poetry Wales and by the Poetry Foundation and the Institute of Welsh Affairs, amongst other publications. Bethany was one of the writers on the Sherman Theatre’s Unheard Voices Scheme and she recently developed a writing retreat for young Welsh d/Deaf and Disabled writers with novelist Megan Angharad Hunter thanks to a commission from Literature Wales and Natural Resources Wales. Bethany’s work typically explores ableism, inaccessibility, and her relationship with nature as a Disabled woman.
Sioned Erin Hughes
Erin lives in Ceidio, Boduan, with her boyfriend, Dafydd, and her little dog, Eldra. Her interests include writing, reading, walking, going to the sea and cooking, and she makes sure she is surrounded by animals every day. Erin was the curator and editor of the book Byw yn fy Nghroen (Gwasg y Lolfa), which won in the Children and Young People category of Tir na n-Og back in 2020. She published her first book for children during the first lockdown of the same year, Y Goeden Hud (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch). She won the Prose Medal at the Tregaron Eisteddfod in 2022 with her first book for adults, Rhyngom (Gwasg y Lolfa). She is a marketing officer for Y Lolfa, and works on projects with Literature Wales and the National Theatre, too. This year, she has taken on a challenge to write a creative piece every day of the year, and she publishes it all on the Instagram account, myfyrdod365. She spends a large portion of her time raising awareness about the rare neuromuscular condition she has, Myasthenia Gravis, and shares her experience of overcoming mental health challenges and an attempt to take her own life back in 2021. She is now in the middle of establishing a charity called Mesen, which provides a core focus on how to tackle suicide from a different angle.
Megan Angharad Hunter
Megan Angharad Hunter is a disabled writer, screenwriter, and musician from Penygroes, Nantlle Valley but she now lives in Cardiff. Since receiving a BA degree in Welsh and Philosophy in 2022, she has been working as a full-time writer, writing mainly for children and young people through the medium of Welsh as well as English. She has written two novels for young adults: tu ôl i’r awyr – her first novel – won the overall Book of the Year Award in 2021, and Cat was published as part of the award-winning Y Pump (The Five) series. She also won the 2020/21 Urdd Eisteddfod Crown and has experience in the television industry. Recently, she co-ordinated a creative writing course for Deaf and Disabled writers with the poet Bethany Handley and in January 2023, she had the opportunity from Literature Across Frontiers to travel across India; during which she visited the Mathrubhumi literary festival and a range of universities with six other European writers. Mainly, Megan writes on the themes of mental health, sexuality, and disability and she is currently working on her first children’s novel. She also volunteers with Llamau, a charity that provides a helpline for young people facing homelessness. As well as writing, Megan enjoys playing a range of musical instruments, exploring the mountains with her dog, composing songs, watching too many films and baking desserts which are far too ambitious.
Summer Keys
Summer Keys is a bilingual, neurodivergent writer, poet, and mental-health nurse. She is currently working on her first YA novel and children’s picture book, as well as a collection of experimental poetry. The latter explores concepts of displacement, trauma, sexuality, and fragmented identity. She has a special interest in the ‘emotional geography’ of place as opposed to traditional topographical poetry, and Wales features heavily in her writing. Summer gained a Distinction for her Creative Writing MA with the University of Roehampton and was awarded the Deans Prize in 2022 for her dissertation. Her work has been appeared in online-and print publications including That’s Life magazine, the Florence Nightingale Foundation, ctrl + alt + delete, and has been displayed in Galeri, Caernarfon.
Alice Knight
Alice Knight, 31, is a transgender Welsh writer from Risca. Born to a household filled with books, she spent her childhood fighting dyslexia so as to be able to read them. This marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for literature as she found herself captivated by the worlds of other writers and a longing to create her own.
Leigh Anthony Manley
Leigh Anthony Manley is a new poet raised in the Llynfi Valley, who now lives in Cardiff. Leigh’s fascination with language dates back to Garth Primary School and a passion for creativity accompanied him to Maesteg Comprehensive. He progressed to Aberystwyth University to study English Literature and History before pursuing a career in financial services.
At 39, Leigh was diagnosed with a life-threatening and debilitating heart condition. By way of coping, Leigh instinctively turned to storytelling. Since this turning point, Leigh has shared his poems with publishers, and his work has been accepted by Poetry Wales, The Seventh Quarry, Nawr, as well as a variety of anthologies. He was shortlisted for Disability Arts Cymru’s Creative Word Award in 2022.
Rhiannon Oliver
Rhiannon Oliver is an actress, poet, and workshop leader. She trained as an actress at RADA and has worked at Shakespeare’s Globe, National Theatre, The National Theatre of Wales, Bath Theatre Royal, Manchester Royal Exchange, and in many other theatres in the UK and abroad. She has also featured on BBC and Sky TV.
Rhiannon started writing poetry in 2020. In March 2021, she won Spoken Word Runner Up in Poetry for Good, a national competition celebrating key workers. She began writing poetry for children in 2021 and has since featured in The Caterpillar, The Dirigible Balloon, Northern Gravy, PaperBound, Buzgaga, Parakeet, Little Thoughts Press, and Launchpad. Her poetry has appeared on television (Nadolig Only Boys Aloud, S4C) and she has created and performed poetry in English and Welsh for The Big Welsh Rhyme Time 2023 (Book Trust Cymru).
Stacey Taylor
Stacey Taylor is a writer from Cardiff. She has an MA in English and Creative Writing and enjoys reading and writing different genres – everything from romance to crime. She was recently longlisted in the Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers’ Prize for a thriller she has written. Her passion is for travelling and was she able to tick her dream trip Route 66 off her bucket list, giving her ideas for lots of stories. She particularly loves children’s fiction and is currently working on a young adult novel.
Sheik Rana
Sheik Rana is a Bangladeshi-born Cardiff-based poet and lyricist. Sheik started his writing career in 1997. At the beginning, his lyrics were often about nature and love. Gradually they have developed to encompass his philosophical musings on the ironies of life, politics, patriotism, and the concept of motherland. His interest in writing spans across several genres such as poetry, prose, creative translation, traveling, urban diaries, and lyrics all of which make up the contents of his first nine books, all written in Bangla and published in Bangladesh.
In 2019 he was involved in a research project offering the perspective of a creative writer as he explored stories of Rohingya refugee children, displaced from Myanmar and placed in camps in Bangladesh. This experience inspired him to write for children. This year his first fiction book for children Amar nam Bhoot, ami Mirpur e thaki (My name is ‘ghost’, I live in Mirpur) is published by Bangladeshi publishing house Toitumbur. His goal is now to publish more works of fiction for children with the second book already in the making. He is also currently working on his second travel journal which aims to present Wales to Bangla language readers.
Hammad Rind
Hammad Rind is a Welsh-Pakistani writer and translator. His debut novel Four Dervishes (Seren Books, 2021), a satire loosely based on a dastan by Indo-Persian poet Amir Khusro, was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award. He is the Urdu translator of Naveen Kishore’s debut poetry collection Knotted Grief. Hammad completed a BA in English and Persian literature and law at the Punjab University, Lahore, and an MA in film making at the Kingston University, London. His stories, articles and book reviews have appeared in a number of UK and international magazines. He regularly leads workshops on creative writing, storytelling, and Eastern literature. He is currently working on his second novel.