Buy this issue now for £6.99 (incl p+p)

New Welsh Review 100, Summer 2013

Editorial:

Boing The Going, We're 100! (Gwen Davies)

MTV's recent travesty of post-industrial life, reality bonanza The Valleys, shows the danger of following the money when it comes to feeling Welsh. So does the BBC’s documentary series broadcast this spring, Great Welsh Writers, as its obsession is with mass markets. Both illustrate the ‘distorted [outsider] image’ or mirror lamented in my last editorial. Here I also took issue with ‘the mirror’s size, how shiny it is... and why we just keep looking in it.’ New Welsh Review is a mirror. On a meagre budget, we buff a sheen fit to distract readers from free online, mass- and social- media glitter. Malcolm Ballin’s study of our sector, Welsh Periodicals in English, is published in June. But Alyce von Rothkirch’s review on p122 got me worried in places. In April, recommendations will be made following the review of Welsh Books Council English-language magazines led by Tony Bianchi. WBC’s Publishing Grants Panel will announce their response to those recommendations in July. My nascent paranoia pricked to the fact that von Rothkirch is on that panel. She writes,

The trajectory of Ballin’s book... can... be summed up by the phrase ‘follow the money’. The early magazines were usually independently funded by wealthy individuals who tended to exert a considerable influence on editorial policy as editors and/or owners. Contributors were not usually paid and neither were editors. Magazines were thus often short-lived.... Later, the more significant magazines became increasingly dependent on public funding.... Nowadays, the question of which magazine receives public funding can be contentious and... there is clearly a trade-off between financial security and editorial independence. What all magazines... have in common, though, is the struggle to create an audience and to retain it, something which Ballin points out has never been easy despite the... over-optimistic hopes of enthusiastic editors. The challenge will continue as the more enterprising periodicals reach out into cyberspace.

‘Follow the money’ was the phrase here that grabbed my throat, closely followed by ‘contentious’ and ‘short-lived’. In my own reading of Ballin’s book, he underplayed the design and visual aspects of magazines, indubitably one of New Welsh Review’s strengths over the hundred issues that we are celebrating today...

read more...

Essays

• Don't Look Back in Anger Julia Forster discovers absence at the heart of six memoirs read more...
• Brief as Photos Penny Simpson on the photography of Vivian Maier & Diane Arbus read more...
• The Manufactured Coastscape in Wales Photo essay by Roger Tiley read more...

Creative

• New Man, Neuman An Argentinian family memoir by Andrés Neuman translated by Richard Gwyn read more...
• My Mary Jane Flash fiction & image by Rhian Edwards & Paul Edwards read more...
• Boa Constrictor Story by Rachel Trezise in reponse to Alun Richards' Dai Country read more...
• A Perfect Queen Story by Inés Garland translated by Richard Gwyn read more...
• The Anatomy of a Beating Story by João Morais read more...
• Lifeboat Flash Fiction by Cynan Jones read more...
• The Tapas Machine Flash Fiction by Lloyd Robson read more...
• Tokyo Spaces Memoir by Jayne Joso read more...
• The Rice Paper Diaries Novel extract by Francesca Rhydderch read more...

Poems

• Dalkey, Regent's Canal (by Danbury Street) and Rain at Hand
Jorge Fondebrider, translated by Richard Gwyn read more...
• So
Maria Apichella read more...
• Myth
Bruce Bond read more...
• View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window
Jonathan Edwards read more...

Reviews

You can now get a taste of some of the excellent pieces in this issue online:

See the contents of Issue:

KEEP IN TOUCH

A brief note on copyright:all authors have given permission for their work to appear online on New Welsh Review's website. Copyright remains with the author. If you wish to reproduce part or all of any article then the permission of the author must be sought, and the author and New Welsh Review credited accordingly.

Contact us:Registered Office PO Box 170, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 1WZ - Telephone 00 (44) 1970 628410 admin@newwelshreview.com
© New Welsh Review Ltd, all rights reserved - Registered in England and Wales - Registered number: 02493828