All-woman shortlist for Wales book of the year
No novels and no male authors on the shortlist for Wales's top book award
Alison Flood reporting from the Hay Festival in the guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 May 2009


Novels, and men, have fared badly in Wales this year, at least according to the judges for the country's top book award, who have selected a woman-only, novel-free shortlist for this year's prize.
Two short story collections and a book of poetry make up the shortlist for the Wales book of the year, with Welsh poets Robert Minhinnick, Sheenagh Pugh and Matthew Francis, and critic and historian Dai Smith, all losing out in what the prize's administrator described as a "bumper" year.

A debut collection of short stories from Deborah Kay Davies, called Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful, is nominated alongside a short story collection from the award-winning novelist Gee Williams, Blood Etc, and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's second collection of poetry, Not in These Shoes.
Read Alison Flood's full story here.