Alys Conran, Joshua Jones and Horatio Clare have joined the Folding Rock team to help widen our search for the best new writing from and connected to Wales.
As a small creative team, the idea of bringing in Contributing Editors is one we’ve been keen on from the start. Alys, Joshua and Horatio have already been such great supporters of the magazine, and after lots of conversation about where we might take it from here, we’re really excited to be benefitting from their ideas and expertise. For us, this is all about being mindfully strategic and extending our reach – connecting with new and established writers and artists all over Wales and beyond, with the help and generosity of our Contributing Editors.
Alys’s engagement with talented creative writing students in North Wales, Horatio’s experience working with some of the UK’s brightest literary stars, and Joshua’s deep knowledge of the contemporary arts scene in South Wales all combine to bring far more into the fold when finding and commissioning great new writing – and for that we’re really grateful.
With a keen awareness of the lack of opportunities in publishing in Wales, Folding Rock are working hard to find ways to open up the magazine and help provide experience and insight where possible in the future. As with any small (and new!) publisher, our budget can only stretch so far, so as much as we’d love a bigger creative team in-house, this isn’t on the cards just yet. Bringing in experienced authors as contributors, who are associated with the magazine and able to use their own networks to help us grow, is a great place to start. We’re learning as we go, and are so excited for this new chapter – as the magazine gets into a proper rhythm, and looks ahead to future issues in the coming months.
“Folding Rock is an absolute feast for readers, a stunning, vital publication. Working with this dynamic team to find and support outstanding new writing is both a creative delight and a cultural responsibility I’m honoured to take on.” – Alys Conran
Alys writes novels, short stories, poetry, creative essays and literary translations. Her first novel Pigeon (Parthian Books, 2016) was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and won Wales Book of the Year – for which her second novel, Dignity (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2019) was also shortlisted. She was Hay Festival International Fellow for 2019-20, appearing at festivals worldwide, and was on the National Centre for Writing & British Council’s International Literature Showcase 2020, named as one of ‘ten writers who shape our future’. Her fiction has been dramatised on radio (Radio 4, Radio 3, Radio Cymru) has been animated, been made into a nationally touring stage production, and is currently in development as a film. Pigeon is also now on the GCSE English Syllabus (WJEC). She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bangor.
“Folding Rock provides the pages for established and emerging writers to share space and express ideas. I can’t wait to commission exciting new work and help de-mystify the publishing process for new Welsh talent.” – Joshua Jones
Joshua (he/him) is a queer, disabled writer & artist from Llanelli, south Wales. Local Fires was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize & Polari First Book Prize. His poetry pamphlets include A Fistful of Flowers in collaboration with Caitlin Flood-Molyneux (2022), Three Months in the Zebra Room (Hello America Stereo Cassette, 2024), and The City on Film (Bread and Roses, 2024).
“I am beyond honoured to work with Folding Rock. Wales has a worldwide and historical reputation for writing which speaks of and with the human condition. Led by Kathryn Tann and Rob Harries, Folding Rock is a force multiplier of Welsh talent and endeavour, putting our writers and their voices where they belong: alongside the vanguard of world literature. By printing our country’s literary contribution in this resounding magazine, Kathryn and Rob are ensuring that our work will live in beautiful physicality on the bookshelves of the far future. I urge every writer of ambition, whatever your confidence, background, unpublication record or nationality, to submit your best work to Folding Rock. Great magazines change nations and histories. This is ours.” – Horatio Clare
Horatio is a writer and broadcaster. His acclaimed memoirs, travel and children’s books include Running for the Hills (Somerset Maugham Award), A Single Swallow, Down to the Sea in Ships (Stanford Dolman Award), Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot (Branford Boase Award), and Heavy Light. His book Your Journey Your Way – the recovery guide to mental health, is a Sunday Times self-help book of the year. Horatio presents ‘Is Psychiatry Working?’ on BBC Radio 4 and writes regularly for the international press. His new book, We Came By Sea: stories of a greater Britain tells the unreported story of the small boat crisis. Horatio delivers training to NHS intervention teams, lectures in non-fiction at the University of Manchester, and lives with his family in West Yorkshire.
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