Saturday 21st October - Literature Events
11.00AM - Mayor's Parlour Town Hall
Hammad Rind
Four Dervishes
One monsoon night, a power cut forces a man full of disappointments on to the streets of the town. Sheltering in a cemetery he comes across four others – a grave digger, an aristocrat, an honourable criminal, and a messiah – each with a past, and with a story to tell. “Easily the most remarkable work of fiction to come out of Wales in a thousand moons.” – Jon Gower
Hammad Rind was born in Punjab, Pakistan, and currently lives in Cardiff, Wales. He speaks nine languages, including Urdu, Persian, Turkish and French, and writes in English, Urdu and Persian.
12.00AM - Mayor's Parlour Town Hall
Rachel Carney
Octopus Mind
Octopus Mind plays with an array of rich and original metaphors to explore the intricacies of neurodiversity, perception and the human mind. These poems observe the nuances of creativity, art, relationships, and self-expression through the lens of neurodiversity, reflecting on the poet’s experience of being diagnosed with dyspraxia as an adult.
Rachel Carney is a Cardiff based poet who has worked in museums for several years, and is completing a PhD examining how poetry about art can enrich our engagement with visual culture.
“Rachel Carney’s debut collection delights in its curiosity and surrealism.” – Katherine Stansfield
12.30PM Cafe 46, Harry Potter Garden.
Bethan Crosby
Welsh reading of The Philosophers Stone
A reading of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' in Welsh with Bethan Crosby from Menter Iaith Castell-nedd Port Talbot. Darlleniad o 'Harri Potter a Maen yr Athronydd' yn y Gymraeg gyda Bethan Crosby o Menter Iaith Castell-nedd Port Talbot.
12.30pm.
1.00PM - Neath Library
Horatio Clare
Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot, and the Terrible Ladybirds and the Terrible Spiders
Horatio Clare reads from his epic trilogy of tales about Aubrey, a boy who can talk to animals and shrink in space. Realising Something Must Be Done, and enlisting help from insects, birds and animals, Aubrey pluckily shows how determination might just save the world.
.jpg)
1.00PM - Mayor's Parlour Town Hall
EXPLORING THE UNCANNY AND THE STRANGE: IN DISCUSSION WITH CARLY HOLMES AND REBECCA PARFITT
Author Carly Holmes launches her new novel Crow Face, Doll Face with Honno’s Commissioning Editor and editor of The Ghastling, Rebecca Parfitt. Both speakers have an affiliation with the new wave of strange and uncanny fiction hitting bookshelves. Exploring the boundaries between weird and horror, Holmes and Parfitt are uniquely positioned to delve into the truly unsettling and spine-tingling and explore fiction they love and fiction they would love to see coming through Wales in the future.
2.00PM - Mayor's Parlour Town Hall
Norena Shopland
Forbidden Lives
Forbidden Lives is a fascinating collection of portraits and discussions that aims to populate LGBT gaps in the history of Wales, a much neglected part of Welsh heritage. In it Norena Shopland reviews the reasons for this neglect while outlining the activity behind the recent growth of the LGBT profile here. She also surveys LGBT people and their activity as far back as Giraldus Cambrensis’ Journey Through Wales in the twelfth century where he reports on ‘bearded women’ and other hermaphrodites. Other subjects include Edward II and Hugh DeSpenser, seventeenth century poet Katherine Philips, the Ladies of Llangollen, Henry Paget, artists Gwen John and Cedric Morris, and actor Cliff Gordon.
3.00PM - Neath Library
Captain Beany
Captain Beany and the Meateorite
Our very own half-baked caped-crusading superhero will be present on Planet Neath this month! He’ll be beaning down from Planet Beanus to narrate his comic superhero adventure publication Captain Beany and the Meateorite.
3.00PM - Mayor's Parlour Town Hall
Sophie Buchaillard
This is not who we are
Shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2023, Sophie Buchaillard’s debut novel is based on personal experience.
1994, Iris and Victoria are pen friends. Iris writes about her life with her family in Paris. Victoria is in a refugee camp in Goma having fled the genocide in Rwanda in which thousands are being killed. One day Victoria’s letters stop, and Iris is told she has been moved. Twenty years later Iris, a new mother, is working as a journalist in London. As she prepares to return to work, her thoughts turn to Victoria and what might have happened to her. How have the lives of these two women, who shared a moment in time, changed in the past twenty years? As the pressure of long-kept family secrets builds, will they ever find each other?
4.00PM - Mayor's Parlour
Meleri Wyn James
Hallt - Welsh language event
Fe fydd y Prif Lenor, Meleri Wyn James, yn rhannu stori Hallt ac yn trafod pam ei bod hi'n bwysig i gynrychioli gwahanol leisiau mewn llenyddiaeth Gymraeg.
Meleri Wyn James, winner of the prestigious Prose Medal at this year’s National Eisteddfod will share the story of her prize-winning novel Hallt and discuss why it’s important to represent different voices in Welsh literature.
Cafodd Meleri ei magu yn Beulah ac Aber-porth. Fe raddiodd yn y Gymraeg o Goleg Prifysgol Aberystwyth ac astudiodd MA yng Ngholeg y Drindod, Caerfyrddin. Mae'n ysgrifennu llyfrau i blant ac oedolion ers dros 25 mlynedd. Mae'n mwynhau darllen, coginio, brodwaith a threulio amser gyda theulu a ffrindiau.
Saturday 21 October 5.00PM
Luke Upton
Rugby’s Greatest Mavericks
Rugby’s Greatest Mavericks takes in over 100 years of the game, with interviews of David Campese, Joel Stransky, Donal Lenihan and Steve Fenwick to name just a few. In this illustrated talk, Luke Upton shares stories from some of the game’s liveliest characters, as well as looking to the future, and asking the question, is the rugby maverick dead? Luke Upton is the author of Rugby's Greatest Mavericks, Hard Men of Rugby and the hilarious satirical rugby novel Absolutely Huge.
6.00PM
Simon Mundy
Poetry and Prose
Acclaimed author and founder member of PEN Cymru, Simon Mundy will be reading from his two most recent books of poetry, More For Helen Of Troy and Waiting For Music, as well as from his fiction. His most recent novel is The Fragile Land, much of it set in the Fifth Century in what is now Wales.