New Welsh Reader 130 (New Welsh Review Autumn 2022)

Illuminated by Anthony Arrowsmith's beautiful photography of the Loughor estuary, this anthology of prose on the theme of 'restored memory' and showcasing writing of place and blended nonfiction, features Angela Evans, in the second of her series celebrating the Wales Coast Path. Here, she uncovers the landscape's secret stories: a skeleton coast, Bonaparte's niece and Amelia Earhart's emergency landing. Meanwhile, we present five of the prose writers who rose to the top of the spring's New Welsh Writing Awards: Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Theme or Setting. These are two nonfiction writers who combine place with memoir and focus on restored and distorted memory. One is Tim Cooke, this year's Awardswinner, whose 'River' (featured in The Bookseller) uses Ogmore River edgelands as a setting for poignant themes of lost children and 'dark play'. The other is the young woman who scooped our category for 18-25 year olds, as well as being placed second in our competition, Hattie Morrison. Her 'Venus as a Spinster' takes an experimental approach, combining an elliptical approach to recovering her own memories of living in a former wool-industry community with a documentary approach to what she sees as the erasure of women from the history of that industry. In fiction, we present 'Taxi', a preview from the Costa-winning poet Jonathan Edwards' satirical short-fiction collection, ValleysWorld. This hyper-empathetic story of two men in a Newport cab creates a private imagined moment in what became a public tragedy of rock history. Plus we showcase two fiction newcomers, Eleanor Williams and Rae Leaver, and continue, in travel writing, with Steven Lovatt's prescient series on Hungarian culture, mores and habitats, 'Haunted Landscape'. Finally, we have a bumper crop of eleven poets, including the marvellous Hilary Menos, and preview poems from autumn collections due out with Seren and Parthian, by Julia Bell, Bryony Littlefair, Mari Ellis Dunning and Rhiannon Hooson.