Gwyneth Lewis - Biography <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <link href="/style/layout.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <meta name="template name" content="shtml" /> <meta name="created" content="20100101" /> <meta name="updated" content="20100101" /> <meta name="keywords" content="Gwyneth Lewis, poet, author, bardd, nofelydd, Jameeleh, sailing around the world, Cardiff, welsh, cymraeg, cymru, wales, barddoniaeth, poetry, Parables Faxes, Zero Gravity, Sonedau Redsa, Cyfrif Un ac Un yn Dri, y Llofrudd Iaith, Sunbathing in the Rain, Chaotic Angels, voyage, Poet�s Odyssey, Hospital Odyssey,"> <meta name="description" content="Gwyneth Lewis, a poet in two languages and writer of factual prose is currently on a voyage around in the world."> </head> <div id="tmpl-container"> <div id="header"> <a href="/index.shtml"><img border="0" height="60" width="974" alt="Gwyneth Lewis Banner" src="/img/f/banner.jpg" /></a> <div style="clear:both;"></div>  <ul id="navigation"> <li><a href="/news.shtml">Latest News</a></li> <li><a href="/books.shtml">Books</a></li> <li class="selected" ><a href="/biography.shtml">Biography</a></li> <li><a href="/gallery/gallery.shtml">Gallery</a></li> <li><a href="/contact.shtml">Contact & Links</a></li> </ul>  </div> <br clear="all" /> <div id="content"> <div id="lhn"> <ul class="lhnav"> <li class="selected" ><a class="selected" href="/biography.shtml">Biography</a></li> <li><a href="/bywgraffiad.shtml">Bywgraffiad</a></li> <li><a href="/biog_millenniumcentre.shtml">Wales Millennium Centre</a></li> <li><a href="/byw_canolfanmileniwm.shtml">Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru</a></li> </ul> </div>  <div id="page-container"> <h1>Biography</h1> <img class="book" src="/img/gwyneth_lewis.jpg" alt="Gwynewth Lewis" title="Gwynewth Lewis" /> <p>Gwyneth Lewis was Wales's National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She has published seven books of poetry in Welsh and English. Chaotic Angels (Bloodaxe Books, 2005) brings together the poems from her three English collections, Parables & Faxes, Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum. A Hospital Odyssey is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in 2010. </p> <p>Gwyneth wrote the six-foot-high words for the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre (which are located just in front of the space-time continuum, as seen on Dr Who and Torchwood.)</p> <p>Her first collection in English, Parables & Faxes (Bloodaxe Books, 1995), won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward. Her second. Zero Gravity (Bloodaxe Books, 1998), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. The BBC made a documentary of Zero Gravity, inspired by her astronaut cousin's voyage to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Gwyneth was part of the Poetry Society's Next Generation promotion.</p> <p>Gwyneth's first non-fiction book Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression (Harper Perennial 2002), was short listed for the Mind Book of the Year. Her adaptation of the play for BBC Radio 4 won a Mental Health in the Media award. Her second book of non-fiction, Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage (Fourth Estate, 2005) recounts a voyage made with her husband on a small boat from Cardiff to North Africa.</p> <img class="book" src="/img/gwyneth_lewis-1.jpg" alt="Gwynewth Lewis" title="Gwynewth Lewis" /> <p>She is a librettist and has written two chamber operas for children and an oratorio, all were commissioned and performed by Welsh National Opera with amateur singers. Stardust: A Love Story, which explains the basic principles of particle physics, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In 2006 she was Writer in Residence at the School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University. Gwyneth is currently writing her first stage plays.</p> <p>In the 1980s, Gwyneth spent three years in the US as a Harkness Fellow, where she studied at Harvard University and the Graduate Writing Division of Columbia University in the City of New York. She was a television documentary producer and director at BBC Wales and left the BBC to become a freelance writer. She has been a NESTA Fellow (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and has received Wellcome Trust Sciart and Creative Wales awards. She spent a year as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advance Studies at Harvard and is currently a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.</p> <div style="clear:both;"></div> </div>  <div id="bookmark"> <h2>Bookmark this page / Llyfrnodi gyda:</h2> <ul class="bookmark-items"> <li class="icon-delicious"><a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.gwynethlewis.com/biography.shtml">delicious</a></li> <li class="icon-digg"><a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=http://www.gwynethlewis.com/biography.shtml">Digg</a></li> <li class="icon-reddit"><a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://www.gwynethlewis.com/biography.shtml">Reddit</a></li> <li class="icon-stumbleupon"><a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit.php?url=http://www.gwynethlewis.com/biography.shtml">Stumbleupon</a></li> <li class="icon-facebook"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?url=http://www.gwynethlewis.com/biography.shtml">facebook</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html>