10th October

November Events

Monday 14th November

Gladys Mary Coles & Edward Storey

Gladys Mary Coles

Poet, novelist, biographer, publisher, editor and tutor of creative writing, Gladys was educated in Wales and at the universities of Liverpool and London. Her published work includes nine collections of poetry, six anthologies and two biographies of Mary Webb. She has received many prizes and awards, and was selected to represent Britain in the Euro-Literature Project.

Gladys’ poetry has been anthologised by Faber, Cassell, Virago, the Forward Prizes, Seren, Collins, as well as being broadcast on BBC TV, BBC Radio 4, BBC Wales.

Gladys has a PhD in Creative Writing and is a Lecturer in Imaginative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University and also at the University of Liverpool. She is President of the Mary Webb Society and runs the literary press, Headlands Publications. Gladys has tutored courses for the Arvon Foundation and at Tŷ Newydd, and is a frequent adjudicator of poetry competitions (most recently at the Cardiff International, Llandudno and Conwy Festivals). Clay (Flambard Press, 2010) is her first novel and was on the 2011 Wales Book of the Year Long List

Edward Storey

Poet, dramatist and non–fiction writer, Edward was born in 1930 at Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. Before becoming a full time writer in the late 1960s, he completed National Service and worked in adult education for the Peterborough City Education Authority. His first volume of poetry, North Bank Night, was published by Chatto & Windus in 1969. In one of his earlier works Portrait of the Fen Country (Robert Hale, 1971) Edward reflected upon his childhood understanding of the world as it was shaped by his fenland experience. In Fen Country Christmas (Robert Hale, 1995) he collected a number of stories, legends and fenland superstitions. He was a founder member of the John Clare Society and of the Eastern Arts Association Literature panel. A regular contributor to BBC ‘Listening and Writing’ programmes and ‘Time for Verse’, Edward was a founder member of Eastern Arts Association’s Literature Panel, promoting its ‘Writers in Schools’ policy

Edward moved to Wales in 1999 and quickly became involved in a variety of cultural enterprises. He has published nine collections of poetry and several volumes of prose; his poems have also been published in Acumen, The London Magazine, The Rialto andSpectator. He has given many readings throughout the country and worked as a tutor for Arvon Foundation courses. His latest anthology ‘Seeing the Light’ was published last autumn by The Leverett Press.
“…A deeply meditative poet who sees in nature a mirror for the human condition and sensibility…these are beautifully crafted poems that exist because they have to…”      The Poetry Quarterly Review