Writers at Work
Writers at Work 2025 is a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye with the support of Literature Wales and Folding Rock, funded by Arts Council of Wales.
Offering a fully-programmed ten days of creative development opportunities, Hay Festival Writers at Work allows the selected writers to engage in Festival events, attend workshops with publishers, agents and, crucially, with established international artists.
Participants to date have achieved a spread of award wins and short-listings, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize, Wales Book of the Year, The New Welsh Writing Award, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Wales Media Award, Welsh Rising Star Award, and Creative Wales Award.
Open to writers working in English and Welsh across genres – fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry – this year’s 10 successful applicants are:
Rosy Adams is a poet and fiction writer from Powys. She was part of the second Representing Wales writer development programme in 2022/23, which led her to set up a Community Interest Company to organise and fund ongoing support for under-represented writers in Wales. She edited and contributed to (un)common: anthology of new Welsh writing (Lucent Dreaming, 2024). Her writing has been published in The Lampeter Review, Lucent Dreaming Magazine, These Pages Sing, Gwyllion and Poetry Wales amongst others. She is in the final stages of a collection of contemporary short stories influenced by myth and fairy tale, and she has a novel in development.
DUKE AL is an award-winning spoken word artist, published poet, hip hop artist and creative practitioner. His latest collection IMAGINE WE TRADE BODIES WITH SHEEP, released on 20 March. His work has been featured in Go.Compare Six Nations 2025, FAW, Cardiff Rugby, Creative Cardiff, TNT Sports (Sport in Words for Black History Month on Sir Lewis Hamilton), BBC Wales, FujiFilm UK, Cardiff Metropolitan University, and BBC Scrum V for The Six Nations 2022.
Jade E. Bradford is an author and communications and engagement professional based in South Wales, holding an MA in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has been published in Wasafiri, Breadfruit Magazine, and Rowayat. Her adult short story, Drifting, won first place in the 2024 Breadfruit Magazine Prize, while her YA short story, An Embarrassment of Janets was highly commended in the 2023 Faber FAB Prize for Children’s Literature. Jade was selected for the 2023/24 Literature Wales Representing Wales cohort and the 2024 Black British Book Festival Writers on the Rise.
Gosia Buzzanca was born in Poznań, Poland. She began publishing short stories in 2002, before moving to the UK in 2008 and earning a Creative Writing MA with distinction. In 2022, she was the recipient of the W&A Working-Class Writers’ Prize. Her debut, a memoir There She Goes, My Beautiful World, set in between Poland and Wales, will be published by Calon in October 2025. She now lives in Barry, South Wales and is working on her first novel.
Tom Cardew is a Welsh artist and writer. His writing has been published in several journals and Material Disturbances, an anthology of his prose poetry, was shortlisted for publication with Cheerio Publishing, Write Bloody UK, and Prototype Publishing in 2024. He was Fluxus Arts Projects laureate at Frac Bretagne and Domaine de Kerguéhennec in 2024 and won the Golden Aesop Grand Prix at the 24th Biennial of Humour and Satire in Art in 2019.
Gemma June Howell began writing dialect poetry from the Rhymney Valley, with her work featured on BBC Radio 4’s Tongue & Talk in 2021. She is the author of Rock Life: 17 Poems from the Welsh Valleys (2015) and Inside the Treacle Well (Hafan Books, 2009). Her debut novel, The Crazy Truth (Seren Books), launched at Hay Festival in 2024, which formed the creative core of her PhD in Creative & Critical Writing. An editor at Honno Press and Culture Matters, Howell edited Land of Change: Stories of Struggle & Solidarity from Wales (2022). Her work has been published in The London Magazine, Poetry Wales and Bloodaxe Books. As Director of Women Publishing Wales - Menywod Cyhoeddi Cymru, Howell champions the voices of women in publishing. Named one of Buzz Magazine’s Most Influential Women in Wales 2024, she continues to advocate for greater representation in literature.
Esyllt Angharad Lewis is an artist and translator from Craig-Cefn-Parc, who explores the relationship between visual and verbal languages. She has performed her work as Radio Cymru's Poet of the Month, at Aberystwyth Poetry Festival, at Transpoesie Festival, Brussels, and as part of Ulysses Shelter’s translation residency in Valetta, Malta. She won the Ifor Davies Award in the Pontypridd Eisteddfod in 2024 for her performance, ‘Blobus a Phryderon Eraill’ (Jellyfish and Other Worries). Her Welsh adaptation of Anthony Shapland's novel, Lan Stâr (A Room Above a Shop) is being released in the Spring, and she is also co-editor of Cyhoeddiadau'r Stamp.
Hattie Morrison is a Welsh writer whose work explores the limitations of storytelling, rural life and memory. Her writing has been published by The Guardian, New Welsh Review, her monologue works have been exhibited at Tate Modern, and her chapbooks are held at the Scottish Poetry Library. She was awarded the Young Welsh Writer of the Year prize by New Welsh Review for her essay Venus as a Spinster and she represented Wales through Literature Wales between 2022-2023. Last year, she was a recipient of A Writing Chance with New Writing North and Substack, Michael Sheen’s Mab Gwalia, and Faber. Born in Carmarthenshire in 1997, Hattie was awarded a full scholarship to study Fine Art at the University of Oxford, and later completed a Masters in Writing at the Royal College of Art. She is represented by Greyhound Literary Agency, and is currently pitching her first novel.
Rhys Thomas is a freelance magazine journalist and editorial consultant from Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, based between Laugharne, Glasgow and London. He writes for The i, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, Time Out, GQ, The Face, VICE, New York Magazine, and many others. His journalistic work focuses on male wellness and mental health, as well as Welsh culture. He is currently working on novels, short stories, and a non-fiction book, many of which will feature working class Welsh culture, geographies, and people.
Rebecca Thomas is a senior lecturer in medieval history at Cardiff University, a Welsh-language novelist and essayist. She has published two historical novels for young adults: Dan Gysgod y Frenhines (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2022); Y Castell ar y Dŵr (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2023). In 2022-3 she was appointed Welsh Writer in Residence for Bannau Brycheiniog National Park to work on a creative project responding to the climate and nature emergencies. This resulted in Anturiaethau’r Brenin Arthur, published by Gwsag Carreg Gwalch in 2024. Her first novel for adults, Y Tŵr, will be published by Sebra in April 2025. Her first essay, ‘Cribo’r Dragon’s Back’, won the inaugural O’r Pedwar Gwynt Essay Prize in 2021 and she has subsequently published further essays in O’r Pedwar Gwynt and in edited collections such as Hi / Hon (Gwasg Honno, 2024).
