For the first interview in our series spotlighting this year’s Hay Festival Writers at Work, we caught up with journalist and fiction writer Rhys Thomas, to find out what makes him tick as an emerging writer, what his creative life looks like, and where he’d like to take it next. Not to mention some great insight and inspiration for anyone else building a career in creative writing.

Tell us about your writing life. When did it start? What does it look like now?

I don’t know, to be honest. I started writing music when I was 10, my interest in lyrics came by the time I was 12. I was tuned into English Literature classes when a teacher had us read the lyrics to A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash. I didn’t buy a book off my own back until I was 18, the summer before I went to study English at uni. That book was Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, I rinsed it and then bought another three of his and did the same with them.  

I’m a journalist by trade, but I’ve increasingly felt the stories I want to look at, and want to put into the world, are better found through fiction and so my journey has seriously begun there recently. I’ve no idea if I always wanted to go into fiction deep down, but probably.  

What kind of writing excites you most?

Simple, elegant, raw writing. True craftspeople honing in on the fringes of life, those overlooked – the normal, working class people, who make up the majority of the world. The people who pay attention to the fading varnish on the wooden bench at the bus stop. Mainly characters who are lost and lonely souls, those figuring things out, those in a stage of growth or change.

I need and hardly see good, by which I mean realistic, dialogue. Most dialogue is awful. Short stories have always been the pinnacle of the craft from a prose sense for me, but novels that actually feel worth their weight are exciting too.

By way of genre, generally it’s dirty realism, coming of age stories, westerns, Southern Gothics. ‘The rural underclasses’.  Also intersections where myth becomes reality: grappling with the irrational, superstitions that put fear into us, traditions and the unconscious and folkloric things passed down. Generational trauma, also.

What are you working on right now?

My wellbeing and discipline. I’m hardly writing, though I should be and want to be, so I’m trying to shake that into shape.

In terms of the projects I’m neglecting: two novels, a short story collection, and a non-fiction book. In that order, for now. The first novel follows students during a year at university and deals a lot with masculinity, ‘young men’, male mental health, male violence, and all that. It’s set mainly in London, but with a main character from Swansea. The structure sort of has a Skins (the TV show) feel to it.

The second novel is something of a coming-of-age-stroke-western, but set in modern west Wales. I don’t really want to say more because I’m quite excited by the concept of it, and I’m shy.

The short story collection will focus on men in a certain way too, and the non-fiction book is about recovery; but a blend of biography, memoir and narrative non-fiction. None are commissioned, and I’ve not landed on an agent yet, despite (blessedly) some interest. I hope at least two of them come to fruition.

Where do you write?

Truthfully I used to get more writing done at the pub than anywhere else. I write on the laptop, but I also send myself emails of paragraphs that come to me in bursts when I’m walking or half asleep, on a dedicated email account. I do occasionally take the time to write with ink and paper and I find I quite like the words that come out when I do. Figuring out how to find the time for that is less fun.

At the moment I mainly live in a cluttered bedroom in a house in north London, and I just can’t bring myself to write from bed. It is not for me. Soon though I’m moving to Glasgow and will have my own flat, so I’ll be looking forward to slamming words down from the kitchen table with a window in front of me, no distractions, a half-decent posture – and crucially, low volume ambient music coming out of a good speaker. Headphones and laptop speakers are too invasive, it needs to be in the distance to create a focus-friendly environment for me, for some reason.  

When do you write?

If I write, it tends to be evenings. I find that doing fiction during the working day completely paralyses me with guilt or fear about the roof coming from over my head. When I’m at home in Wales, it’s at the kitchen table after everyone’s gone to bed, when it’s starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and all that… (I’m from Laugharne.)

I do rent an office space, which does work well in terms of ‘where’ but it’s usually closed up by 6pm and so I tend to just do journalistic work there, sadly.

I will get into the habit of morning pages when I have more space, I hope. But I’ve generally been someone who finds the peace of night a place where I can relax and get to it, as if I’m burrowing away on stolen time. Slowly breaking out of jail. I like editing during the day (printed, with pencil, then typed up).

And… why do you write?

I can’t think of a good reason. I don’t know if it’s a compulsion, as most say. Creating and documenting are, but writing I find hard – same with reading. Nothing else feels like a way in which I can go through life and feel satisfied, though. It makes the most sense of anything, even though it hardly makes sense – but then life doesn’t really make sense to me. I didn’t choose to be born, I’m just trying to find pleasure and purpose as I go through it, and writing seems the thing.

With the writing I do, I think there’s something about getting the world I come from, think about, see, experience, theorise, bla bla bla, down on paper so that it can be used as a source of comfort, inspiration, learning, for others. I guess that’s what writing does for me, and I’d like to give that back.

Is there a book or author that has influenced you?

Plenty. Most. But, Raymond Carver is my main influence. Though All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is maybe my favourite book, and has been for a couple of years.

“Writing I find hard – same with reading. Nothing else feels like a way in which I can go through life and feel satisfied, though. It makes the most sense of anything, even though it hardly makes sense… I’m just trying to find pleasure and purpose as I go through [life], and writing seems the thing.”

Tell us about something you are really proud of.

The fact that I keep turning up, keep trying, keep writing, keep hoping, keep wanting to see things through.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer developing your practice?

I listen to a lot of podcasts/interviews with writers, and honestly anything George Saunders has ever said is gold.

‘Just write, you can delete it later if it’s crap.’ is the other. Not sure who said that to me, but that’s ultimately all there is to it, isn’t it. Cook, and skim away the shit – like good stock. 

There are so many ways to have a creative career. What would life as a ‘working’ writer look like for you?

Stable and constant, I hope. That seems to be the obstacle that stops me from writing; finding a metabolism that keeps me nourished and not hungry in wellbeing, finance, etc. When I find that routine and financial set-up, I’m hoping to thrive and be a consistent good few hours/500 words a day/book draft a year, kinda guy. So long as the ideas keep coming.

Writers at Work is a creative development programme for Welsh writers at Hay Festival, with the support of Literature Wales and Folding Rock, funded by Arts Council of Wales.

Offering a fully-programmed ten days of creative development opportunities, Hay Festival Writers at Work allows the selected writers to engage in Festival events, attend workshops with publishers, agents and, crucially, with established international artists.

Check out some of our recommended events for this year’s Hay Festival here, including showcase readings from the 2025 Writers at Work cohort.