Gwyn, Richard 1956-

views updated

Gwyn, Richard 1956-

PERSONAL:

Born 1956, in Wales; married Rose Pallot; children: two daughters. Education: Attended London School of Economics and Cardiff University; earned an M.A. and Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Ivan Mulcahy, Mulcahy & Viney, Ltd., 15 Canning Passage, Kensington, London W8 5AA, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Poet and author. Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, senior lecturer in creative writing until 2006. Has worked as a waiter, sawyer, gardener, and fisherman.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

One Night in Icarus Street, Red Sharks Press (Cardiff, Wales), 1995.

Stone Dog, Flower Red/Gos de pedra, flor vermella, Cyhoeddiadau CRANC, 1995.

Walking on Bones, illustrated by Tessa Waite, Parthian Books (Cardiff, Wales), 2000.

Being in Water, Parthian Books (Cardiff, Wales), 2001. (Editor) The Pterodactyl's Wing: Welsh World Poetry, Parthian Books (Cardigan, Wales), 2003.

OTHER

Communicating Health and Illness, Sage (London, England), 2002.

Discourse, the Body, and Identity, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2003.

The Colour of a Dog Running Away (novel), Parthian Books (Cardigan, Wales), 2005, published as The Color of a Dog Running Away, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2007.

Deep Hanging Out (novel), Snowbooks (London, England), 2007.

Also author of Iwan Bala & Llués Peñaranda. Columnist for Poetry Wales; contributor to New Welsh Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Richard Gwyn is a Welsh poet who has published such works as One Night in Icarus Street and Walking on Bones. Gwyn's first novel, The Color of a Dog Running Away, concerns Rhys Lucas, a literary translator leading an expatriate's life in Barcelona, Spain. Lucas finds an unsigned postcard slipped under his door inviting him to an art exhibit, where he meets Nuria Rasavall, a beautiful and mysterious woman with whom he begins an affair. In a bizarre twist, the two are kidnapped by followers of Pontneuf, a priest who believes they are the final reincarnated members of a group of Cathars who disappeared in the thirteenth century. Sentenced to death by Pontneuf, Lucas escapes and returns to Barcelona, spending his days in a drug-induced haze waiting for Nuria, whose secretive past may hold a clue to the abduction. "Gwyn is at his best describing Lucas's Rimbaudian life as an artist," observed Library Journal contributor David Keymer. A Publishers Weekly critic noted that "the glamour of expatriate bohemia is seductively realized." Though a critic in Kirkus Reviews believed that Gwyn was unable to sustain his narrative, describing The Color of a Dog Running Away as "a slowly deflating bubble of sophisticated storytelling," Booklist reviewer Frank Sennett called the novel "an enjoyably cockeyed exploration of identity and rebirth."