Carolyn Thomas

Carolyn Thomas Carolyn Thomas is from Tonna, a village in the Neath Valley in South Wales, but has lived on Tyneside since her days as a student at Newcastle University. Now retired after a career of teaching in Further, Higher and Adult Education, she is now enjoying the freedom to write. She has reviewed for Stand and published poetry in Dreich, Impossible Archetype, The Ekphrastic Review and elsewhere as well as stories in two anthologies published by Honno Press, Lipstick Eyebrows and Painting the Beauty Queens Orange, which contains her account of life as a gay woman in the 1970s. She lives with a misanthropic cat, still thinks of Wales as home and, stereotypically, sports a dragon tattoo. Lipstick Eyebrows Chosen for their contemporary edge in both setting and story, this collection reflects the lives of contemporary women of mixed age and background. The collection hosts an all-female cast covering themes of travel, arrival, change, reconciliation, departures, estrangement, death, survival and the intricacies of women’s lives. Stories included: Kate Waddon: Wild Romances, Carolyn Thomas: The King of the Fairies, Gosia Buzzanca: Summer’s End, Silvia Rose: By the Water’s Edge, Naomi Paulus: Lipstick Eyebrows, Julie Primon: Something about weddings, Tracey Rhys: Pearls Before Swine, Chinyere Chukwude-Okeh: To buy an expensive dream, Ellen Davies: Scab Painting the Beauty Queens Orange The ‘70s wasn’t all glam rock and flares, punk and pogo-ing… In Painting the Beauty Queens Orange, the women who lived the decade reveal what it meant to push boundaries, claim your identity, and carve out your place amidst the winter of discontent, the scorching summer of ‘76 and the rise of Thatcherism. One young woman says a forced goodbye to her newborn baby. Another grasps new opportunities and sets sail on a LGP Tanker with a crew of men. A third asserts her sexual identity. A fourth sets up a kitchen table business that launches an international brand. These stories of ambition and adventure, motherhood and marriage, are by turns heart-breaking, humorous, and honest.

Gareth Writer-Davies

Gareth Writer-Davies Gareth Writer-Davies is from Pencelli, Wales. His work has been recognized multiple times in various competitions, including being shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2014 and 2017. He was also commended in the Prole Laureate Competition in 2015 and 2021, and was named the Prole Laureate for 2017. Gareth received commendations in the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2015 and was highly commended in 2017. In 2023, he won the Wirral Festival Poetry Competition and was the runner-up in the Spelt Poetry Competition. In 2024, he was the runner-up in the Mid Wales Poetry Prize. Gareth was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2019. His published works include Bodies (2015) and Cry Baby (2017) by Indigo Dreams. He has also published The Lover’s Pinch (2018), The End (2019), and Wysg (2022) by Arenig Press. Wysg In WYSG Gareth Writer-Davies is instantly recognisable, as he navigates the borderlands of Wales, seeking to bridge the new and the familiar; the streaming of our lives, our conflicts with nature, getting older and always, where we have been and where we are going? The End Poems from the edge of annihilation, leavened with black humour and pastiche, musings upon poetry and posterity even as death beckons. The Lover’s Pinch Gareth Writer-Davies fleshes out his twin subjects of love and sex in poems of affection, sardonic humour and a characteristic lightness of touch that makes his first collection both exceptionally readable and an intimate pleasure.

Sue Moules

Sue Moules has been published in New Welsh Review, Planet, Poetry Wales, and Ambit. Her Poems were included in the International Women’s Day anthology (Welsh Women’s Coalition, 2010).
In 2024, her poem ‘Walking the Whippet’ was chosen for Brighton and Hove Poems on the Buses.
Her poems have appeared in By Ways Anthology (Arachne) 2024 and Words on Troubled Waters (Lutra Press) 2024. Her most recent collection is The Moth Box (Parthian).