Gillian Clarke, Malcolm Pryce, and Catrin Dafydd are three talented modern Welsh authors who each bring something exciting and different to the world of literature. If you love exceptional poetry, riveting screenplays, and gripping novels, these authors won’t disappoint.
I chose these three modern Welsh authors because they’re all gifted and have given us fresh and unique works. If you love epic historical poems like The Gododdin, Welsh noir (yes, that’s a thing!), and dark humor with mystery and contemporary Welshness, these writers bring you all those things in spades.
Who is the best-selling Welsh writer? This question is a bit challenging to answer without being able to look at the numbers and confirm them. That being said, a good guess would be Roald Dahl. He gave us children’s classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, among many others. We can estimate that he sold between 200 and 250 million copies, outselling C.S. Lewis and putting him in the same range as J.R.R. Tolkien.
This post is about several modern Welsh authors.
Modern Welsh Authors
Modern Welsh Authors: Gillian Clarke
We are beginning our list of modern Welsh authors with Gillian Clarke, the author of spellbinding poetry that has won many awards. This Cardiff-born writer now makes her home in Ceredigion. Clarke’s poetry has been so prolific, well-reviewed, and acclaimed that her work has been part of the General Certificate of Secondary Education in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales for over thirty years. She also frequently does poetry readings for students in several cities across Europe.
Clarke’s awards include the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry (2010) and the Wilfred Owen Award (2012). She also was the National Poet of Wales from 2008 – 2016. In addition to her many modern Welsh poetry collections, she’s also written dramas for theatre and radio, a writer’s journal, and translated Welsh prose and poetry into other languages. One of her most amazing works is her rendition of the book-length 7th-century Welsh poem Y Gododdin (The Gododdin). The Gododdin were the Brythonic people of Hen Ogledd (the Old North). They lived in southeast Scotland and northeast England after the Romans withdrew from Britain. The poem honors the men who fell in battle at Catraeth around AD 600 and is considered classic Welsh literature.
The Gododdin: Lament for the Fallen by Gillian Clarke
The original poem was written in Old Welsh and Middle Welsh, so Clarke has updated the language for contemporary readers. What is the difference between modern Welsh and Middle Welsh? So glad you asked! The spelling system wasn’t standardized in Middle Welsh as it is today. However, the pronunciation and speech sounds used in Middle Welsh were similar to those used in the modern language.
For example, if English is your first language, you could read Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which is written in late Middle English, with a good dictionary and the knowledge of a few language rules—but unless you’ve got advanced education in English Literature, probably not without effort. The same goes for Middle Welsh if you’re a native Welsh speaker.
From the blurb: The Gododdin charts the rise and fall of 363 warriors in the battle of Catraeth around the year 600AD. The men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin rose to unite the Welsh and the Picts against the English, only to meet a devastating fate. Composed by the poet Aneirin, the poem was originally orally transmitted as a sung elegy, passed down for seven centuries before being written down by two medieval scribes. It is comprised of one hundred laments to the named characters who fell and follows a sophisticated alliterative poetics. Former National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke is the first poet to create a translation. She animates this historical epic with a modern musicality, making it live in the language of today.
Who is the most famous Welsh poet?
The title of “most famous Welsh poet” goes to Dylan Thomas. If you don’t know who he is, you might have an idea after all. He’s the fellow who wrote the famous poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. You can learn more about him here: Dylan Thomas in the post “Famous Welsh Authors Who Inspire Us in Any Language.”
Malcolm Pryce
The talented novelist Malcolm Pryce is next on our list of famous modern Welsh authors. While this writer was born in Shrewsbury, England, he moved to Cymru at the age of nine. He grew up in Aberystwyth, a town in Ceredigion. He’s the author of a popular Welsh detective series, Aberystwyth Noir, set in an alternate version of the town and published between 2001 and 2015. For this reason, Pryce has been called “the king of Welsh noir.” Much of the themes of the series’ stories revolve around what Pryce calls the “moral turpitude” of the town.
When fans asked Pryce why he hasn’t written more books since 2015, he told them he had written most of the novels during a very happy time in his life from 2001 – 2007. Back then, he’d been living in a beautiful part of Bangkok where his surroundings sheltered him from the chaos of life. One morning, though, he was hit with depression and struggled with it ever since. He added that he doesn’t complain about being in this state—he only explains, as people are kind enough to ask about it.
However, and fortunately for both Pryce and we readers, recently, he told fans that he woke up and “sniffed a certain salty tang on the breeze and decided to walk down to the metaphorical harbour. My boat was still there, and I began to jot down some thoughts for a new Aberystwyth novel.”
A Streetcar Named Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce
From the blurb: As Aberystwyth’s only private eye, Louie Knight was used to clients losing things: hats, coats, umbrellas… their lives.
But Cornelius Pingüinos was the first client to lose his memory. And it was no ordinary memory. It contained the solution to the most enduring mystery of the Patagonian War—that conflict known as the Welsh Vietnam: the fate of the 32nd Airborne Division, who vanished into thin air while trying to lift the siege of Nueva Aberystwyth.
‘Big Penguin’, the penguin industrial complex, threatens to kill Louie if he solves the mystery. The Druid gangsters say it’s curtains if he doesn’t. And to make matters worse, Louie breaks his cardinal rule: he falls in love.
Welcome to the mean streets of Aberystwyth: a surreal seaside world of broken hearts, broken dreams, and broken ice-cream cornets.
Modern Welsh Authors: Catrin Dafydd
Catrin Dafydd is a talented author born in Gwaelod y Garth, near Cardiff. She grew up speaking Cymraeg (the Welsh language) and writes in both English and Welsh. Dafydd published her first Welsh-language book in 2006 and her first in English in 2007. In 2009, she co-wrote a Welsh television drama, Ar y Tracs (On the Tracks). She later became a writer for Pobol y Cwm (People of the Valley). This Welsh soap opera airs on S4C, the Welsh-only television station.
Dafydd won the Crown at Cardiff Bay’s 2018 National Eisteddfod of Wales. She received this prestigious award for her poetry collection that explores Welshness in the Grangetown area of Cardiff. For a little context, Grangetown is an area alive with many cultures, fascinating histories, and cool places to visit, like the 130-year-old pub “The Grange” and the Grange Farm, the first settlement in the area.
Here’s one of her fiction books, and I’ve got to say, I love the title! And the blurb makes you laugh out loud. Sam Jones is a fun and relatable character, and you’ll love meeting her in the pages of this novel.
Random Deaths and Custard by Catrin Dafydd
Sam Jones is a perfectly ordinary Valleys girl. Except for the random deaths, that is. Which she only just manages to avoid. Like the time she swallows a fish finger whole before answering the door to the catalogue salesman. That random death leads to love, mind, which is a relief to Sam: people on her street will stop thinking she’s a lesbian. She has plenty of other crosses to bear: the custard factory where she works; Nanna’s farting and Anti Peg’s swearing; her Mam’s boyfriend, her squaddie brother. Not to mention the posh Welshies at the end of the road. With its comic darkness, its write-as-she-speaks style, and its recognition of how the ordinary and eccentric are two sides of the same coin, this is a novel that will have you laughing and crying into your custard. This book was shortlisted for the Spread the Word Campaign 2008-09.
This post was about several modern Welsh authors.
I hope you enjoyed meeting these amazing Welsh writers of the 21st century. You may also like the post 7 Best Welsh Novels Full of Hardship and Hiraeth.
Leave a Reply