Tell us about yourself and your creative background
I’m a Welsh writer and artist and I’m the founder of g39, an artist-run space in Cardiff. I spend a lot of my time supporting other artists and shaping space for stuff to happen; sometimes literally building it, other times just through making connections between people or sharing resources. I grew up in Bargoed but I’m based in Cardiff. I was included in the Observer 10 debut novelists 2025 and right now, writing is pushing all the buttons for me.
So, what’s your Creative First?
I always think the odd years are the most interesting and a lot of different things came together for me recently, it’s a busy 2025.
The year started with Feathertongue a short fiction on BBC Sounds; in March my debut novel, A Room Above a Shop, was published by Granta; and a solo-exhibition, Liar,Liar, recently launched at Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
Of course, the graft happens a long time before anything is public – the novel was written over the last three years. It is a love story between two gay men, set in Wales in the late 80s at a time of industrial decline and economic uncertainty. This shifting landscape is a key part of the novel. The relationship grows in the small space above the shop, but their community is both a place of freedom as well as a claustrophobic ‘container’ for their lives.
Feathertongue treads similar territory, but focuses on two boys at the edge of adolescence, the push and pull power-dynamic of dares, bets and bullying. The story arrived when I learnt the literal meaning of a Welsh name for butterfly, glöyn byw (living ember). Writing for radio and thinking about rhythm and emphasis was a very steep learning curve.
Both stories feel familiar, but they are told from a very specific standpoint, and a very specific place. More than anything, they’re about our search for connection: about loyalties, innocence, fear and the strength of family bonds as much as they’re tales of blending in, hiding, mimicking and deception.
Liar Liar takes this element further – one thing stands in for another. On one level it’s about illusion and disguise; but it draws on life-experience of rural queerness, of performing straight. Expect a huge stereoscopic billboard, a Foley artist, a film of starlings mimicking man-made noises, and hundreds of man-made ‘prop’ starling nests. It was fun to feel a sense of play and the fictions plus the exhibition allowed that.
What was the biggest challenge you faced?
There are always things life stacks up to stop us. Sometimes the way is totally blocked, but other times I’m learning to find a way around or I try to take advantage of obstacles.
On a pragmatic level, working in the arts in Wales has often meant long hours and low pay, so I always have to add to my income with freelance jobs. Mostly I can’t afford to turn down paid work, so it makes routine difficult to maintain. I grew up in a household where money was always a concern and I live with a constant awareness of finance; or lack of it. I do all sorts of odd jobs to make ends meet, which means protected time in the studio, or writing for myself comes second. I was the first to go to college in my family – and the only one in the arts – so sometimes it feels difficult to explain what I do, that it is a proper job.
One of these jobs is writing for other people – proposals, written reviews and articles – but these are all paid work, so they take priority over my writing. It took me a long time to give myself permission to write.
A big barrier was my own hesitancy, a long time spent thinking “Am I allowed in this world?” Our expectations are shaped very early in life and I was not an academic child – but I could draw. Very early on, art was the box I was put in – happily, I loved, and still love, that aspect of what I do – but it means that you grow up with a very clear idea of what is allowed, and through that, of who you are. Those expectations get really hard to blur. They ‘set’ around us. I think in some ways though, all my time spent learning how to look, being taught in a visual way has helped me. That, along with a lot of naivety, has kept me going!
Can you share tips for others who want to publish their work?
First off, totally forget the fetish of a physical book on the shelf, forget the idea of printed pages and cover design and your name on something.
It has to be about the writing, and if you’re writing short fiction, every decision, every word should be working really hard. Often in conversation we pause and say ‘Why was I telling you that?’ and it’s worth asking that of every sentence. If the writing isn’t the best it can be, what’s the point of making it a book?
Notice things. Live in the world and notice things. All your senses, all the weight and lightness of things. At risk of sounding daft, it is all there, waiting. Don’t think that writing is separate from life, that you have to stop and sit at a desk to write.
Read. Read everything – or listen to everything. Problem pages, novels, instruction manuals and try to understand what those words are doing. Understand the intent - emotional, persuasive, transactional - how does it work on you?
Forget word counts, just write. Don’t have targets, don’t think that there is a right way or a wrong way to do it. Write in crayon, write in phone notes, write on your hand, however it makes sense. Glean is a good word, like the Welsh word Gwlana. Both refer to the process of picking over already-harvested land or snagged wool to gather the left-behind, unprofitable scraps, and it’s a good thought to hold. Gather stuff.
Why choose Cardiff for your creative first?
I came back to Wales in the late 90s, and Cardiff has been home since then. There have been huge changes over that time – some good things, some losses – but that is how Cardiff always has been, in flux.
I sometimes think that we don’t really do cities all that well in Wales, but we’re bloody good at big towns – and that’s what Cardiff feels like. I mean that as a positive thing, and I hope it never changes. That’s not about scale, or limiting ambitions, but about attitude, and communities. Geographically we’re between the sea and the mountains, the Valleys, and they should remind us of why Cardiff exists – the pinch point of the Industrial Revolution.
What can we expect from you next?
I’m really pleased to be working with poet and artist Esyllt Lewis on a Welsh language adaptation of A Room Above a Shop. It’s been a really interesting process of re-imagining the characters and their relationships, rethinking rhythm and idiom in translation, for that specific part of Wales, emphasising the rootedness of the main characters. Simply called Lan Stâr, it launches later this summer.
There is also something brewing in terms of the next novel, two novels actually. One of them is the equivalent of a circular scribble that I’m trying to untangle. It’s set on a single, proscribed piece of land that is diminishing and is written in four voices. So far, all I will say is that a tree grows from a nut that rolls from a pot that smashes to the floor. I have also had to find a new word for the point at which a reed breaks the surface of water, tilym, which is significant. Not sure exactly how I’ll spell it, but start using it now!