With protests against racism and police brutality continuing to grip many countries around the world – several folks are asking themselves what more, beyond that, they can do to be better allies to the black community in this necessary, crucial fight for equality. Outside of donations and signing petitions, one such means is the amplification […]Read More
Audiobooks tend to divide the masses in the world of literature. With applications such as Audible and Scribd helping with accessibility to books and stories, some adore them. Others, myself included, are not big fans of them. On top of this divide, there is an inherent question among consumers of literature: can audiobooks rightfully be […]Read More
Any parallel universe is possible within the pages of a novel, a memoir and, indeed, from my perspective, a cookbook (or several) too. I have faith that the ‘To Be Read’ (TBR) list will never diminish. I live to indulge my inner bookworm and often wonder what will be the last book I ever read, […]Read More
As a nation, we are all looking for a little bit of escapism in these strange times. Arecent report by The Guardian found that many of us are turning to books, withthe average adult’s reading time in lockdown having almost doubled.Where crowds of characters in film and TV often give us a visual reminder of […]Read More
“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” — Audre Lorde In recent years, poetry has […]Read More
The best way to learn someone’s secret is to have them write a story. “So it really happened?” one reviewer demanded. “The professor made her do. . .that in exchange for raising her boyfriend’s grade?” The author—still under a mandate of silence—shrugged. “Is it based on your life?” someone else slyly asked. Nostrils flared, eyes […]Read More
During these dubious and unprecedented days many of us will be spending isolated, I often find that the antidote for my anxiety comes in the form of an engrossing and powerful novel. As these next few weeks will undoubtedly be unsettling, here is a compilation of novels which offer a mental escape from these harrowing and fraught times. Read More
Florida (2018) Lauren Groff’s second collection of short stories, Florida, plunges us into a hot and humid world, where swamp creatures slither over the thresholds of human existence, and tensions drip from rain-soaked leaves. It stages a multi-faceted exploration of a domesticity fraying at its edges, eroded by a pervasive sense of societal, political and […]Read More
2 months on from the previous post, the first ever semester of Swansea Universities’ International Dylan Thomas Prize Module has come to an end. The excitement surrounding this module did not die with the handing in of final assignments however! We were all invited to the prize ceremony to meet the shortlisted authors, attend the […]Read More
Jacob Fleming is a student at Swansea University currently studying a module in the Dylan Thomas prize, making him one of the first students in the UK to study a module based solely on a literary prize. Here in the first of two pieces, he provides an exclusive update on the progress of the […]Read More
“Heathcliff// it’s me Cathy, I’ve come home // I’m so // cold, won’t you let me in your // window”. We all know the lyrics to the Kate Bush song, the mournful masterpiece taking its name and inspiration from a masterpiece of literature, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. I recently read the book for the first time, prompted […]Read More
Juno Dawson is a Young Adult author, who, in 2014, was awarded the title ‘Queen of Teen’ – an award given to writers of teen fiction. This is due to the success of her books, many of which feature LGBT+ characters. Juno Dawson is a transgender female and came out in 2015, after already establishing […]Read More
To celebrate LGBT+ history month, Megan Tarbuck takes a look at the life and literature of Virginia Woolf. Read More
Title: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Author: Laurence Sterne What Do I Think Of It?: What do you get when you cross Jonathan Swift with Daniel Defoe and throw in a splash of Carrollesque surrealism? You get Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, clergyman-turned-author. This is a riotous, 18th-century mock-autobiography of the fictional wag Tristram Shandy, who […]Read More
Down and Out in Paris and London is more than just a novel. It’s an analysis of poverty so profound and real that the reader is made to feel dirty, cold, and rejected by the ruthless society of the 1930s. It’s also terribly relevant in a world reeling from the realisation that globalism might not work for […]Read More
