Author biographies

Elizabeth Baines’ stories have been published widely in magazines and anthologies, and her collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World, is published by Salt, who also publish her two short novels, Too Many Magpies and The Birth Machine. Her work is included in two previous Honno anthologies, Power and Laughing, Not Laughing. She has also written prizewinning plays for radio and stage, and she is the runner-up in 2014’s International Short Fiction Journal prize.

Alice Baynton has written stories since she could hold a crayon. Born and raised in an idyllic valley out in the wilds near Aberystwyth, she honed her craft and spent a lot of time with her cat. She studied Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University before travelling in South America and going to live in New Zealand for a year. She is currently half way through her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, living nearby in Cheshire. Despite all of the moving around, her heart is still very much in mid-Wales, and she has to return home for regular top ups of Welshness. She has had two short stories published by the small, independent Tranquillity Publishing, is a contributing editor for the online travel magazine Eventus, and despite having yet to begin her first novel, she can feel it brewing.

Caroline Clark (65), originally from the Midlands, has lived in Aberystwyth since 1978, when her husband came to work there. She has mainly been active in community theatre since coming to Wales – as an administrator, performer, director and wardrobe mistress. She has always written poetry and more recently short stories, which have been published in various anthologies including Honno’s Written in Blood. She regularly reviews books for the Gwales website.  In recent years, while being a fairly housebound carer, she completed a novel and has plans for another. She is also working on a collection of poems relating to the local landscape and history.

Pam Clatworthy was born in Rumney, Cardiff and educated at the village school, which was an exciting place during WW2 as air raids disturbed lessons and talented, married women were allowed to return to teaching. She went on to Gowerton Girls Grammar School and finally trained as a teacher. She moved to Cumbria where she now lives and has written for The Countryman, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and has had short stories and poetry broadcast on regional radio. Pam is married with two children and five wonderful grandchildren who all love a ‘cwtch’ from time to time.

Chrissy Derbyshire is an author, folklorist and storyteller based in Cardiff. Her first book, Mysteries, was published in 2008. She has since had several stories, poems and essays published in magazines and anthologies, and is a regular speaker at The Mercian Gathering.

Eileen Dewhurst has lived and worked in North Wales for more than twenty-five years.  She loves reading and writing, being with friends and family, making a bit of music now and then and, most of all, being outside walking with the dog.   

Maria Donovan grew up on the Dorset coast and lived for some years in Holland before moving to Wales in 1997. She likes languages, peace and studying history. Her first collection of short stories, Pumping Up Napoleon, is published by Seren.

Gillian Drake was born in Barry and now lives in Swansea. Her two books for teenagers were both published by Pont; other published work includes short stories, articles and poetry. Gillian is a graduate of Aberystwyth University, and gained an MA in Creative Writing from Swansea University in 2005. She has worked in the voluntary sector in areas as diverse as archaeology, mental health and education.

Melanie C. Fritz was born in south-western Germany in 1982 and only came to Wales in 2006 to study at the University of Glamorgan and to learn a bit of Welsh. She has enjoyed making up and writing down stories ever since she was taught the alphabet and, to date, she has published two novels in her native German: Weltmeister im Handtuchwerfen in 2010 and Chaos im Kessel in 2014. She lives in Pontypridd, a place that inspires her somehow.

Jacqueline Harrett is a former teacher and lecturer with a passion for oral storytelling.  She has had articles published in the TES and her resource book for teachers, Exciting Writing, won the UKLA author award in 2007. Throughout her teaching career she tried to inspire others to engage with the written word.

Jacqueline was born in Northern Ireland and has two grown-up children.  She has lived in Cardiff for more than twenty years with her long suffering husband, a mad cat and a tortoise called Speedy.

After years of inflicting her writing on her colleagues on an in-house magazine, Nic Herriot finally let loose her creativity  in 1995 when she completed an MA in Creative Writing at Trinity Carmarthen. Her ideas come from family, friends and adventures that happen in the real world. All her family have left home, to save themselves the embarrassment, except her poor wife, who is waiting for her passport to come through. Nic wrote this story as part of her campaign to show that there are good care homes out there. 

Suzy Ceulan Hughes is a writer and translator. Mad Maisy Sad is her third short story to be included in a Honno anthology.

Rona Laycock was born in Bangor, North Wales. Over the years she has taught in schools and colleges in the UK, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt, established and run a ‘helpline’ for a local BBC radio station, and trained emergency response volunteers for NGOs and local authorities. She has an MA and PhD from Swansea University where she studied with the late Nigel Jenkins, who was an inspirational mentor. She runs creative-writing courses and literary events in and around Gloucestershire, where she now lives with her husband, David. Her work has been published in various national and international magazines and anthologies.

She is the editor of writing magazine, Graffiti, and her first poetry collection, Borderlands, was published in the form of an audio CD in 2009 by Music Masters Ltd and Cole’s Press.

Jo Mazelis’ collection of stories Diving Girls (Parthian, 2002) was short-listed for Commonwealth Best First Book and Welsh Book of the Year. Her second book, Circle Games (Parthian, 2005) was long-listed for Welsh Book of the Year. Her novel Significance was published by Seren in September 2014. She lives in Swansea.

Sue Moules has published three poetry collections: The Moth Box (Parthian), In The Green Seascape (Lapwing), and The Earth Singing (Lapwing). She also published a joint collection Mirror Image (Headland). She is a member of the poetry performance group Red Heron.

Sue has been published widely in literary magazines including Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Planet, Ambit, The North, Orbis, Ambit and Roundyhouse. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies: On My Life ( Honno), Exchanges (Honno), Poetry Wales 25 Years (Seren), The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Cinnamon), The Voice of Women in Wales (Wales Women’s Coalition), Of Cake and Words (Cledlyn), A Star Fell From Orion (Peter, Bridge and Stephen), and Poetry From Strata Florida (Carreg Ffylfan Press). She was featured as the first Honno poet of the month in July 2012 and will be Honno poet of the month again in July 2014.

Siân Preece was born in Neath and studied English Literature at the University of Wales, Swansea. She has lived in Canada and France, and in Scotland, where her first story collection, From the Life, was published by Polygon. Now based in Cardiff, she took an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and in the following year won the 2010 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition with her story ‘Getting Up’. She writes stories, drama and abridgements for Radio 4, and is currently working on a novel and a second story collection.

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Penny Thomas is publisher at Firefly children’s Press and fiction editor at Seren. She lives in Cardiff with her two children. 

The Wish Dog is the third collection of short-stories that Stephanie Tillotson has edited for Honno, two in collaboration with Penny Thomas. Herself a published playwright, poet and short story writer, Stephanie worked for many years in television, radio and theatre production. She now lives in Aberystwyth and is writing a doctoral thesis at Warwick University on Shakespeare in performance.