Biography
Fflur Dafydd is a novelist, critic and musician from Carmarthen, West Wales.
She was born in 1978 and studied English at the University of Aberystwyth, later being awarded an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She also has a Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Bangor, her specialist field being the poetry of R. S. Thomas, on which she has published academic articles.
She lectures at Swansea University, and has performed at literature festivals worldwide. She was Writer in Residence on Bardsey Island in 2002, in Helsinki in 2006 and was a participant in Iowa University's International Writing Program in 2009.
Her first book, Y Gwir am Gelwydd (The Truth About Lies), 1999, written while a student at the University of Aberystwyth, was the prizewinning volume of poetry and short stories which won the literature medal at the Lampeter National Urdd Eisteddfod. Her first novel, Lliwiau Liw Nos (Colours by Night) was published in 2005, and was followed by a second novel, Atyniad (Attraction) in 2006, set on Bardsey Island, and winner of the 2006 National Eisteddfod of Wales Prose Medal. Her first novel in English, Twenty Thousand Saints, was published in 2008, and led to her being awarded the Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer of the Year Award.
Fflur Dafydd is also a popular singer-songwriter, who performs regularly with the band The Beard. She has been a solo artist since 2005 and has released three albums.
Her most recent novel is Y Llyfrgell (The Library), published in 2009, and inspired by her visits to the National Library of Wales as a PhD student. It won the 2009 National Eisteddfod of Wales Daniel Owen Memorial Prize.
In 2011, The White Trail was published, a book in the 'New Stories from the Mabinogion' series, published by Seren.
