Sian Northey Translator, Author & Editor

Sian Northey is a freelance author, poet, translator and editor. Sian was brought up in Trawsfynydd, and now lives in Penrhyndeudraeth in Gwynedd. As a (very!) mature student she gained a PhD in Creative Writing at the School of Welsh at Bangor University, the university where she'd done her first degree, in Zoology, decades earlier. Amongst other projects she is currently working on a collection of essays and doing background research for a play involving chapels who continue to hold services with only two or three in the congregation. Her translation of John Sam Jones' autobiography (The Journey is Home/Y Daith Ydi Adra) will be published by Parthian this spring.She was chosen to be part of Hay Festival's Writers at Work scheme in 2016 and 2017. In 2018 she was invited by Literature Across Frontiers to attend an international poetry translation workshop in Kerala, India, and was also chosen to be part of an international artistic retreat on Ynys Enlli/Bardsey under the auspices of Write4Word and Kultivera (Swedish arts organisation). In 2019 she was part of the Theatr Genedlaethol's new writers' scheme, which culminated with a rehearsed public reading at Theatr Gwynedd and Theatr Clwyd of her play 'Un Tro'. Another short play was part of a performance by Dirty Protest. Ness Owen lives on the island of Ynys Mon, off the North Wales coast, where she writes plays, poetry and stories in between lecturing and farming. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. Ness's first collection Mamiaith (Mother Tongue) was published by Arachne Press in 2019; and her work also appeared in our anthology An Outbreak of Peace. Ness's work has appeared in various journals including Poetry Wales, Red Poets, I, S & T, The Fat Damsel, Culture Matters and in anthologies published by Arachne Press, Three Drops Press, Here and Now project and Mother's Milk Books. She has had a number of short plays produced, including The Footpath (Ucheldre Rep) at The Ucheldre Centre, Holyhead, Keep Moving (Suitcase Community Theatre) at Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Goodbye My Love (Scriptslam) at Sherman Cymru, Cardiff, Shut Up (Dirty Protest) at The Bar in Galeri, Caernarfon, and Saviour's Day (Dirty Protest) at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff.Ness's poems have been performed for Solstice Shorts Festival so often we asked her to help organise, and you can find her solstice poems in: Shortest Day, Longest Night, Dusk, Noon, Time and Tide, Tymes goe by Turnes and Words from the Brink.