In the video above I am interviewed by Caroline Stockford of New Welsh Review in my role as Artistic Coordinator of the North Wales Mental Health Research Project, a collaboration between leading writers and mental-health professionals in Wales, inspired by the stories of Victorian and Edwardian patients at the former asylum at Denbigh.
Stories by Glenda Beagan, Carys Bray, Simon Thirsk, A. L. Reynolds, Gee and David Williams, and myself were excerpted in New Welsh Review 104, and subsequently anthologied, along with additional stories by Manon Steffan Ros and Elaine Walker, as Dangerous Asylums: Stories from Denbigh Mental Hospital told by Leading Welsh Writers. The anthology was reviewed by Nigel Jarrett for Wales Arts Review, while Jim Perrin supplied an introduction to the project website.
I have read and taught at events alongside Gareth Creer, Menna Elfyn, Louise Fazackerley, Patrick McGuinness, Carol Rumens, Chrissy Williams, Eley Williams, John Fraser Williams, and others.
I have designed and taught on Creative Writing courses at B.A. and M.A. levels in universities in Wales and England, addressing international delegations on writing and the short story, appearing at festivals and retreats, working in prisons, teaching students from all walks of life, and arranging seminars and workshops for the wider public. As a Writer on Tour part-funded by Literature Wales I am available to perform at events throughout Wales and the wider U.K.
Dr Sarah Gallup is a clinical psychologist at the California Department of State Hospitals. She also runs a podcast exploring the history of mental health care and the stories of people who lived or worked Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals. In six recent episodes she reads from Dangerous Asylums...
Read postAll newsThe day was dull, rather misty, and wet under foot, but neither too warm nor too cold for walking. I began to think (without being especially aware that I was thinking) about the place of blood in Christian iconography, about the chapel in which I was raised, which seemed mildly obsessed with it...
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‘freely and fiercely inventive short stories… supercharged with ideas.’
Jon Gower, Nation Cymru
‘heaving with loss, regret and familial bonds.’
Annexe Magazine
‘sketched with a depth and sureness of touch which makes them memorable and haunting.’
Caroline Clark, gwales.com
‘dark, complex, pensively eloquent’
Sophie Baggott, New Welsh Review
Translated by T. Gwynn Jones, with an introduction by Rob Mimpriss.
‘Lucid, skilful, and above all, of enormous timely significance.’
Jim Perrin
‘In this exemplary collaboration between medical science and imagination, lives preserved in official records, in the language and diagnoses of their times, are restored not just to light, but to humanity and equality. This anthology is a resurrection.’
Philip Gross
‘An invaluable translation.’
Angharad Price
Translated by Rob Mimpriss, with an introduction by E. Morgan Humphreys