Newport Festival of Words
Newport Festival of Words
A celebration of words, from songwriting to storytelling, poetry to prose, and featuring local, national, and international writers and performers.
​
20 - 23 March at venues across Newport City Centre
Confirmed Authors and Speakers
Dan Richards
Dan Richards, born in Wales in 1982 and raised in Bristol, is an acclaimed non-fiction writer specialising in art, travel, and adventure.
His first book, Holloway (2013), co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Stanley Donwood, became a Sunday Times bestseller.
In The Beechwood Airship Interviews (2015), Richards explored the creative processes of notable British artists and craftsmen, including Bill Drummond, Dame Judi Dench, Jenny Saville, the Manic Street Preachers, and Stewart Lee. Climbing Days (2016) explored the mountaineering adventures of his great-great-aunt and uncle, Dorothy Pilley and I.A. Richards, culminating in his ascent of the Dent Blanche in the Swiss Alps. In Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth (2019), Richards examined the allure of remote shelters in diverse landscapes, from Cairngorm bothies to Japanese shrines.
His forthcoming book, Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark, is set to be published in March 2025. Richards has contributed to publications such as The Guardian, The Economist, Monocle, and The Telegraph.
Catherine Fisher
Catherine Fisher is a poet and novelist for children and young people. She has published five collections of poetry, the most recent being The Bramble King (Seren Books) Her work has been widely anthologised. She has written over 40 novels for young people, often using myth and legend, including Incarceron, a New York Times bestseller and Times Book of the Year, and her work has been translated into many languages. She has been shortlisted for the Carnegie, Blue Peter, Smarties Book Prize and Costa Awards and has twice won the Welsh Books Council Tir na n’og Prize, most recently with The Clockwork Crow. Her latest publications are a re-telling of the Mabinogi story, Culhwch and Olwen, a novel for children, Starspill, and for Three Impostors Press, The Yellow Nineties, a tale of decadent London.
%20(1).jpg)
David Hurn
David Hurn, born in 1934 of Welsh descent, is a self-taught photographer who began his career in 1955 as an assistant at the Reflex Agency. While a freelance photographer, he gained his reputation with his reportage of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Hurn eventually turned away from coverage of current affairs, preferring
to take a more personal approach to photography. He became an associate member of Magnum Photos in 1965 and a full member in 1967. In 1973, he set up the famous School of Documentary Photography in Newport, Wales, and has been in demand throughout the world to teach workshops. In 1997, he collaborated on a very successful textbook with Professor Bill Jay, On Being a Photographer. However, it is his book Wales: Land of My Father that truly reflects Hurn’s style and creative impetus. David Hurn has a longstanding international reputation as one of Britain’s leading reportage photographers. He continues to live and work in Wales.
Claire Fayers
Claire Fayers has been writing stories all her life. She grew up in South Wales where, thanks to her local library, she developed a lifelong obsession with myth and magic. She now lives in the Welsh mountains with her husband and two disappointingly unmagical cats. Her books include The Accidental Pirates (shortlisted for the Children's Book Award), Storm Hound (winner of the Tir na nOg award) and Welsh Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends (nominated for the Carnegie medal). Her latest book, Welsh Giants, Ghosts and Goblins dives into some of the weird and wonderful stories of Wales.
Tim Lebbon
Tim Lebbon is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had almost fifty novels published to date, and hundreds of novellas and short stories. His latest novel is Among The Living. He has won a World Fantasy Award and four British Fantasy Awards, as well as Bram Stoker, Scribe and Dragon Awards. He's recently worked on the new computer game Resurgence, acted as lead writer on a major Audible audio drama, and he's co-writing his first comic for Dark Horse. The movie of his novel The Silence debuted on Netflix in April 2019, and Pay the Ghost was released Hallowe'en 2015. Tim is currently developing more novels, short stories, audio dramas, and projects for TV and the big screen. Find out more: www.timlebbon.net
Tom Bullough
Tom Bullough is the author of four novels and, most recently, Sarn Helen: a Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future, which won the 2024 Wales Book of the Year. His first feature film, Mr Burton, co-written with Josh Hyams, tells the story of the early life of the actor Richard Burton and will be released in February 2025. At present, Tom is the Story Associate in Hay Castle, where he is working on an audio-visual project about the River Wye. He grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire and now lives in Bannau Brycheiniog with his two children, a collie and a goldfish.
Marsha O'Mahony
Marsha O’Mahony is a writer, journalist, and oral historian with a deep interest in preserving the voices and stories of communities and landscapes. Her latest book, This Stolen Land: A People’s History of the Gwent Levels, is the result of two years spent travelling the Levels, gathering the memories and experiences of those who live and work in this unique, ever-changing landscape. Through a series of oral histories, she captures the rich traditions, resilience, and culture of the area, from shipwrecks and saltmarsh mutton to the ever-present threat of flooding.
Marsha’s previous books include River Voices, an oral history of the River Wye, and Scratch of the Hop, a social history of hop-growing in the West Midlands. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, BBC Countryfile, Country Life, The Field, and This England, among others.
​
Marsha will be appearing at Newport Festival of Words 2025 in conversation with Gaynor Funnell to discuss This Stolen Land and the power of oral history in preserving community narratives.
Barbara Nadel
Barbara Nadel currently writes two crime fiction series: the Hakim and Arnold books set in London and the Cetin Ikmen novels set in Istanbul, Turkey. The Ikmen books were recently made into a TV series by Paramount, screened by BBC2 as The Turkish Detective. Back in 2005, Barbara won the CWA Silver Dagger for Crime Fiction for her Ikmen book Deadly Web. A regular speaker at crime fiction conventions Barbara has a degree in psychology and has worked with those experiencing mental health problems both in hospitals and in the community. She lives with her husband in Essex where they are both owned by a cat called Terry.
Andrew Michael Hurley
Andrew Michael Hurley lives in Lancashire with his family. His first novel, The Loney, was originally published by Tartarus Press as a 300-copy limited edition, before being republished by John Murray. It went on to sell in twenty languages, win the Costa Best First Novel Award and the Book of the Year 2015 at the British Book Awards and TV rights have been sold to New Regency Television. Devil's Day, his second novel, was picked as a Book of the Year in five newspapers, and won the Encore Award. His novel Starve Acre was published in 2019 and was adapted for the screen by director Daniel Kokotajlo for cinema release this autumn. Barrowbeck, his new book, will be published on 24 October 2024.
​
Dr. Mark Lewis
Mark Lewis studied the effect of relative humidity on the corrosion of chloride contaminated wrought iron for his PhD at Cardiff University, having gained his BSc and MSc in Archaeological Conservation and Conservation (Chemical Analysis) there. His PhD data was used to preserve the wrought iron hull of the ss Great Britain in Bristol and is now used to inform the preservation of steel suspension bridges worldwide. Since 2001 he has been a curator and conservator at the National Roman Legion Museum in Caerleon, looking after the Roman collections there. He has been Chairman of both the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust and the Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Gary Raymond
Gary Raymond is a novelist, playwright, critic, editor, and broadcaster. He is presenter of the Radio Wales Arts Show for BBC Radio Wales, was a co-founder of Wales Arts Review and its editor for ten years. He is the author of six books. His latest is Abandon All Hope: A Personal Journey Through the History of Welsh Literature (Calon Books, 2024). His other non-fiction book is How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics) (Parthian, 2020), a personal takedown of the world’s favourite Christmas movie. His novels include For Those Who Come After (Parthian, 2015), The Golden Orphans (Parthian, 2018), and Angels of Cairo (Parthian, 2021). He is also writer of three BBC radio documentaries, and a stage play about the life of writer Dorothy Edwards. He recently opened a record shop, Grinning Soul Records, in Monmouth town.
Carole Hailey
Carole Hailey completed the six-month Guardian/UEA novel-writing course with Bernardine Evaristo, who imbued Carole with such a love for writing fiction that she abandoned her career in law to study first an MA, then a PhD in Creative Writing. Carole’s debut novel, The Silence Project, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize, and was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick, a Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month and an Independent Booksellers Book of the Month. She lives in Wales with her husband and two dogs.
Newport Festival of Words 2025
