Conran awarded Hay Festival Creative Wales International Fellowship

Novelist Alys Conran has been awarded this year’s Hay Festival Creative Wales International Fellowship.

Also called the Cymrawd Rhyngwladol Cymru Greadigol Gwyl y Gelli, the programme provides an opportunity for a writer from Wales to participate in Hay Festival editions throughout the year in Wales, Mexico, Spain, Peru, Colombia and Croatia. It is funded by the Arts Council of Wales.

Conran’s second novel Dignity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) was published in April to critical acclaim, while her first novel Pigeon (Parthian) was released in 2016 and won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2017.

Hay Festival international director Cristina Fuentes de la Roche said: “Alys Conran is one of the most exciting contemporary writers around. We’ve enjoyed celebrating her work at Hay Festival Wales over the past few years and are honoured to do so internationally, introducing new readers to her vibrant writing in Mexico, Spain, Peru, Colombia and Croatia. They’re in for a treat.”

Conran added: “I’m so honoured and delighted to be Hay International Fellow this year, and looking forward to having multilingual conversations, developing cross-cultural creative ideas and sharing inspiration at these wonderful festivals. I’ll not be forgetting where I’m from, though, and will be taking a piece of Welsh writing slate to each place, to honour the role that slate once had in supporting writing and literacy throughout the world.”

Conran’s first trip will be to Hay Festival Querétaro in Mexico at the start of September, followed by Segovia in Spain later that month.