The Language of Landscape

Join us as we discuss all things language and landscape. An event not to be missed!

Tom Bullough

WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 WATERSTONES WELSH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2023

From the author of Addlands, and featuring illustrations by Jackie Morris, an immersive and evocative non-fictional journey through Wales and a revelatory meditation on the nation's past, present and future.

Sarn Helen - Helen's Causeway - is the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north. As Tom walks the route, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, he describes the changing landscape around him and explores the political, cultural and mythical history of this country that has been so divided, by language and by geography. Running alongside this journey is the story of Tom's engagement with the issue of the climate crisis and its likely impact on the Welsh coastline. From one of Wales' most celebrated younger writers, Sarn Helen is at once a vivid and immersive portrait of a nation, and a resonant meditation upon the way in which we are shaped by place and in turn shape the places - potentially irrevocably.

Fiona Benson

Fiona Benson's first collection, 2014’s Bright Travellers, won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for a First Full Collection and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her anthology Vertigo and Ghost (2019) earned widespread acclaim, as well as a shortlisting for the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She lives in Devon with her husband and her two daughters.

Davina Quinlivan

Davina Quinlivan is the author of Shalimar: A Story of Place and Migration (Little Toller Press, 2022). She is currently an Artistic Director of Paper Nations, an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, and a Story Associate with The Story Society, Bath Spa University.