AuTHOR’S nOTeS
IS WAlES caught in a cultural straitjacket? While there is justifiable pride at the perennial hallmarks of Welsh culture – mining, chapels, choirs, hiraeth – could the focus on these be preventing Wales from fully expressing itself as the diverse, modern country it is?
In 2019, three writers met at the Writers at Work scheme for Welsh writers at the Hay festival and started discussing just that. The trio had significant writing experience between them.
Darren Chetty has worked in education for 25 years and contributed to The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla, as well as co-authoring What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions.
Grug Muse is a poet and essayist from Dyffryn Nantlle and Hanan Issa is a Welsh-Iraqi writer featured on platforms such as BBC Wales, Film4, British Council and Hay Festival. Her publications include My Body Can House Two and Just So You Know: Essays Of Experience.
“We spent a lot of time at Hay talking about how weird it was that this massive literary event was held in Wales and yet Welsh writing doesn’t seem to have the same status as Irish and Scottish writing throughout the UK,” says Darren. “At the same time, we were having conversations with other Welsh writers about what Welshness itself means.
“So many of the popular ideas around Welshness seem to be more concerned with the past – what we’ve called the ‘three Cs’ of castles, coal and choirs. We didn’t want to diminish the importance of these stories – they are integral to Wales. But we were keen to expand popular notions of Welshness.”
They developed the idea of a collection of essays that would offer imaginative, radical perspectives on the future of Wales, taking readers beyond the cliches and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. In doing this, they were inspired by the renaissance that the essay form is currently enjoying in Wales.
“In Welsh, magazines like O’r Pedwar Gwynt have really nurtured a new interest in the form and nurtured the writing of lots of the writers in this collection, myself included,” says Grug. “In English, Planet is also consistently publishing great essays and essayists, so it’s a good time to bring some of this writing together in an anthology and to a new readership.”
Working with Iestyn Tyne, a writer and musician based in Caernarfon who has published three
FICTION