New Welsh Review 84, Summer 2009

Editorial:

Twenty-One (Kathryn Gray)

This issue, New Welsh Review celebrates its twenty-first birthday. Such longevity for a literary magazine is nothing short of a feat of endurance and gives cause for genuine celebration. Inevitably, too, the landmark invites a retrospective. To that end, New Welsh Review has commissioned researcher and specialist in literary journalism Malcolm Ballin to examine the vision of six editors and their output: eighty-three issues of the magazine over two decades that have seen enormous change across Wales’s literary and political landscape. His resulting analysis – not without its criticisms – provides an engaging insight into the magazine’s development, as well as the intersections and counterpoints of editorial directions. Equally, it serves as a case study of the many travails awaiting those who would seek to run a literary magazine in the age of indifference. I hope that it also highlights the essential – dare I say it? – nobility of the entire endeavour.
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Features

• Quite Healthy 'with Inbreeding'? by Malcolm Ballin
  Malcolm Ballin examines the vision of New Welsh Review’s six editors and their output: eighty-three issues of the magazine over two decades that have seen enormous change across Wales’s literary and political landscape. His resulting analysis – not without its criticisms – provides an engaging insight into the magazine’s development, as well as the intersections and counterpoints of editorial directions.
  
  
• More in the Journey by Tim Lebbon
  Tim Lebbon writes an appreciation of Arthur Machen: ‘perhaps there is still hope that the name of Machen will become more familiar, more critically celebrated, and will one day take its place at the forefront of turn-of-the-century fiction’.
  
  
• Crime Wave by Kitty Sewell
  Kitty Sewell on crime fiction: ‘as thrillers have become more popular and their potential rewards greater, more of the aspiring young literary writers...are...trying to become the next Grisham or Grafton’.
  
  
• Philip Jones Griffiths: A Final Interview by Amanda Hopkinson
  An exclusive final interview with arguably the most famous and greatest Welsh photojournalist.
  
  
• First Hand by Owen Sheers
  Owen Sheers on poetry and television.
  
  
• Photo Essay: One Day I Will Be Old and Grey by Adam Goodge
  
  
  
• The Last Word by Richard Lewis Davies
  The author and publisher reflects on the literary political times.
  
  

Fiction

• Sicilian Lock-Up by Richard Gwyn
  
• Sixteen Shades of Crazy by Rachel Trezise
  

Poems

Poems by :
Joe Dunthorne
Carrie Etter
Daniel Hardisty
Meirion Jordan
Christopher Meredith
Linda Saunders
Anne Stevenson
Damian Walford Davies

Reviews

The majority of books reviewed in New Welsh Review can be bought online from gwales.com, the Welsh Books Council's online bookshop, by simply clicking on the 'buy now' icon. For any that are unavailable, please contact the publishers or ask in your local bookshop. All details were correct at the time of publication.

• Submarine by Joe Dunthorne
  Published by Penguin
  ISBN 9780141032757  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Niall Griffiths
  
  
• Written in Blood by Ed. Lindsay Ashford and Caroline Oakley
  Published by Honno
  ISBN 9781906784010  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Kaite O'Reilly
  
  
• What Brings You Here So Late? by Tony Conran
  Published by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch
  ISBN 9781845271701  pb £7.50
  Reviewed by Tony Brown
  
  
• The Alone to the Alone by Gwyn Thomas
  Published by Parthian/Library of Wales
  ISBN 9781905762965  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Stephen Knight
  
  
• Real Wales by Peter Finch
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114839  pb £9.99
  Reviewed by Mike Parker
  
  
• Crawling Through Thorns by John Sam Jones
  Published by Parthian
  ISBN 9781905762361  pb £9.99
  Reviewed by Sarah Broughton
  
  
• Moonrise by Meirion Jordan
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114815  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Tim Liardet
  
  
• Stranger Within the Gates by Bertha Thomas
  Published by Honno
  ISBN 9781870206945  pb £8.99
  Reviewed by Michelle Smith
  
  
• Last Bird Singing by Allan Bush
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114556  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Cathryn Scott
  
  
• After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-up of Britain by Hywel Dix
  Published by University of Wales Press
  ISBN 9780708321539  pb £18.99
  Reviewed by Andrew Milner
  
  
• Long-Haul Travellers by Sheenagh Pugh
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114778  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Sarah Wardle
  
  
• The Treekeeper's Tale by Pascale Petit
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114716  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Sarah Wardle
  
  
• A Rope of Vines by Brenda Chamberlain
  Published by Parthian/Library of Wales
  ISBN 9781905762866  pb £8.99
  Reviewed by Jane MacNamee
  
  

Letters