Richard Gwyn (Welsh writer)
| Richard Gwyn | |
|---|---|
| Born | 22 July 1956 Pontypool, Wales |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Genres | Novel, Poetry |
| Literary movement | Fiction, Poetry |
| Website | |
| www |
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Richard Gwyn is a Welsh writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. His works have been translated into many languages and he has had successful relations with the art and music communities of Europe.
After studying anthropology at the London School of Economics, he began to travel extensively across Europe, living for periods in Greece and Spain, working on fishing boats and as an agricultural labourer. Following a serious illness, he returned to Wales, where he took a PhD in Linguistics. His experiences of travel catalyzed his interest in writing, and he published several books of poetry and prose poems. Over the same period he also wrote two books on health, concerned with the ways that language and culture influence our understanding of illness, an area he researched for almost a decade. He currently teaches at Cardiff University, where he is Director of the MA program in creative writing. He has translated poetry from Spanish and Catalan and reviews books for The Independent.
His first work of fiction, The Colour of a Dog Running Away, set in Barcelona, has received critical acclaim for its quality and originality, and has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Italian Chinese and Russian. His second novel, Deep Hanging Out, set in Crete during the closing stages of the Cold War, was published in 2007 and is loosely based on the myth of the Minotaur. His work has been described as being concerned with the discarding of grand narratives and fixed meanings in order to pursue a more fleeting and fragmentary representation of the world.
His memoir The Vagabond's Breakfast, published in 2011, has been called an "astonishing memoir of alcoholism, illness and redemption describing, in language of the utmost control, what it feels like to lose control of one’s life." Patrick McGuinness, writing in The Times Literary Supplement called it "a jagged tale gracefully told. Full of humane surreality, there’s something whole, even holistic, about the brokenness of the life it pieces (back) together." Tessa Hadley, in the London Review of Books described it as "an enthralling memoir of a young man going deeply and terribly astray."
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