Books

Birdsplaining: A Natural History (New Welsh Rarebyte, 2023)

            Shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2024

 

Losing Israel (Seren, 2015)

            Winner, Creative Non-Fiction Wales Book of the Year, 2016

            Selected as one of the Sunday Telegraph’s Best Travel Books of 2015

 

The Greatest Need: The Creative Life and Troubled Times of Lily Tobias (Honno, 2015)

 

Whose People? Wales, Israel, Palestine (University of Wales Press, 2012)

 

Self-portrait as Ruth (Salt, 2009)

            Long-listed, Wales Book of the Year 2010

 

Misappropriations (Parthian, 2006)

            Shortlisted, Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2007

 

Selected articles, chapters and editions

 

Selected articles

 

‘The new Old North’, Cwlwm, October 2024

 

‘Talking across the divide’, Nation.Cymru, January 2024

 

‘How a Victorian trip to Palestine spurred modern ornithology – and left it with imperial baggage’, The Conversation, December 2023

 

‘Nondescripts’, The London Magazine, April 2023

 

‘Ysgymuno Genedoltheb’, O’r Pedwar Gwynt, April 2023

 

‘Waiting for the bird apocalypse’, The Clearing, November 2022

 

‘You have to let go to move on,’ Modern Love, The New York Times, 15 May 2020

 

‘We shouldn’t let the only statue of a woman in Wales become a monument to continued inequality’, Nation.Cymru, February 2019

 

‘Literature funding upheaval – who should get the goodies?’ Nation.Cymru, July 2017

 

‘A colonial fantasy’, Agenda 55 (autumn 2015), pp. 50–51

 

‘Welsh views of Palestine’, Western Mail (Welsh History Month series), October 2015

 

‘Ideology and story in life-writing’, New Welsh Review 108 (Summer 2015), pp. 6–9

 

‘Writers at risk of entering politics’, IWA, clickonwales.org, April 2015

 

 

Book chapters and editions

 

Foreword to The Presence by Dannie Abse (Parthian, 2025)

 

‘Vanishing acts’, in Emma Schofield (ed.), Woman’s Wales? (Parthian, 2024)

 

Introduction to My Mother’s House by Lily Tobias (Honno Classics, 2015)

 

‘The Boarding House’, in Shani Rhys James, Florilingua (Seren, 2013)

 

‘Public, like a frog’, in R. M. Turley (ed.), The Writer in the Academy: Creative Interfrictions (Boydell & Brewer, 2011)

 

‘“By whom shall she arise? For she is small”: the Wales-Israel tradition in the Edwardian period’, in Nadia Valman and Eitan Bar Yosef (eds), The Jew in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa (Palgrave, 2009)

 

Introduction to Eunice Fleet by Lily Tobias (Honno Classics, 2004)

 

Festival appearances, readings and events

 

Hay Festival, 2024

 

Kendal Mountain Festival, 2023

 

Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2023

 

Arvon Writing Centre, 2023

 

Monty Lit Fest, 2023

 

Hay Festival, 2023

 

Amdani Festival, 2023

 

Oxford Literary Festival, 2023

 

V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, Royal Society of Literature, British Library, 2017

 

Story Collider, British Science Festival, 2016

 

Gwyl Arall, 2016

 

Poetry International Festival, Southbank Centre, London, 2010

 

Honours and Awards

​

New Welsh Writing Award, 2021

 

Elected Fellow, Higher Education Academy 2018

 

Elected Fellow, Learned Society of Wales, 2017

 

Wales Book of the Year, Creative Non-Fiction, 2016

 

Creative Wales Award, Arts Council Wales, 2015-2016

 

Selected media appearances

 

Dei Tomos, Radio Cymru, 2023

 

‘The Idea’, BBC Radio Wales, 2023

 

‘Statue No. 1’, BBC Radio 4, 2019 (writer and presenter)

 

‘Walking in someone else’s shoes’, TEDx Aberystwyth, November 2018

 

‘Dylan ar Daith’, S4C, October 2017

 

‘All Things Considered’, BBC Radio Wales, 2017

 

Jason Mohammad, BBC Radio Wales, 2015

 

‘The Wales Report’, BBC One Wales, 2015

 

Dei Tomos, BBC Radio Cymru, 2015

 

‘Patagonia 150’ Episode 1, BBC Radio Wales, 2015

 

‘The Jewish Hour’, Salford City Radio, 2015

 

‘Sunday Supplement’, BBC Radio Wales, 2015