Aber at Hay

Professors Howard Thomas and Richard Marggraf Turley, and Dr Jayne Elisabeth Archer will deliver the 2013 Inspire Lecture at the Hay Festival on Thursday 23 May. Pictured (from the left) are Professor Howard Thomas, Dr Adeline Johns-Putra, director of INSPIRE Jane Davidson, Professor Richard Marggraf Turley, and Dr Jayne Elisabeth Archer.

Professors Howard Thomas and Richard Marggraf Turley, and Dr Jayne Elisabeth Archer will deliver the 2013 Inspire Lecture at the Hay Festival on Thursday 23 May. Pictured (from the left) are Professor Howard Thomas, Dr Adeline Johns-Putra, director of INSPIRE Jane Davidson, Professor Richard Marggraf Turley, and Dr Jayne Elisabeth Archer.

21 May 2013

Some of Aberystwyth University’s world-leading research will be showcased at one of the world's biggest literary festivals which gets under way later this week.

Six internationally recognised Aberystwyth academics and two Honorary Fellows will be speaking at this year’s Hay Festival which runs from 23 May to 2 June. Last year’s festival attracted more than 225,000 visitors.

Thursday 23 May at Landmarc 100 Stage at 7pm
Professor Richard Marggraf Turley, Dr Jayne Elisabeth Archer and Professor Howard Thomas, all from Aberystwyth University, will deliver the 2013 INSPIRE Lecture on Literature and Sustainability as winners of a competition set up by the Institute for Sustainable Practice Innovation and Resource Effectiveness atUniversity of Wales Trinity Saint David, supported by ASLE-UKI.

The paper explores how key Shakespeare plays engage with a crisis of food supply, distribution and sustenance – a crisis with contemporary resonances and one in which, through his business dealings, the playwright was himself a player. The lecture will be followed by a discussion between the Aberystwyth academics, director of INSPIRE Jane Davidson and the chair of ASLE-UKI Adeline Johns-Putra. More information here: http://bit.ly/YXGxNx

Tuesday 28 May at Landmarc 100 Stage at 5.30pm
Gwen Davies, Editor of Wales’s most distinguished literary quarterly, New Welsh Review, which is hosted at Aberystwyth University, will be talking to Lloyd Jones and Cynan Jones about the seriesNew Tales From The Mabinogion. These new narratives, which give the classic Welsh tales a contemporary spin, engage with rugby, mental health and male identity in Lloyd Jones’ See How They Run and Scritture Giovani fellow Cynan Jones’ Blood, Bird, Snow. Cynan’s The Dig was shortlisted for the EFG Short Story Award.

Tuesday 28 May at Llwyfan Cymru – Welsh Stage at 6pm
Clive Hicks-Jenkins, an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University and one of Wales’ most celebrated visual artists, will be working withThe Mid Wales Chamber Orchestra to produce a new animated version of Stravinsky’s classic work with imagery and animated sequences.  The narrator will be Lisa Dwan. The Soldier’s Tale by Igor Stravinsky has a libretto by CF Ramuz that was translated by Michael Flanders. His daughter Stephanie Flanders joins the animator and the conductor James Slater for an after-show conversation, chaired by Clemency Burton-Hill.

Tuesday 28 May at the Summer House at 7pm
New Welsh Review (NWR) will be celebrating their 25th birthday and their 100th edition at the Summer House in the company of Damian Walford Davies, Rendel Chair and Head of the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, Richard Marggraf Turley, and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, Jem Poster, also of the Department. Sunday TimesEFG Private Bank Short Story Award contender Cynan Jones will present the winner of the NWR Flash in the Pen microfiction competition for stories under 100 words.  Forward Prize nominee, poet Rhian Edwards, will also perform her flash fiction story which features in the 100th edition. The evening has been sponsored by The Rendel Chair at Aberystwyth University and the Welsh Books Council. http://www.newwelshreview.com/

Tuesday 28 May at Landmarc 100 Stage at 7pm
Matthew Francis and Tiffany Atkinson, both members of the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth, will read from their new poetry collections at the Landmarc Stage. Francis will read from his new Faber collection, Muscovy, which explores a world of marvels, real and fantastic. Atkinson will preview her 2014 Bloodaxe collection SoMany Moving Parts, and the session will be chaired by Simon Mundy.

Wednesday 29 May at the Summer House at 4pm - Aberystwyth at Hay Reception
As part of Aberystwyth University’s extensive presence at this year’s festival, the Vice Chancellor, April McMahon, would like to offer a warm welcome to the Aberystwyth at Hay drinks and canapé reception which will include a special reading from poet and author Owen Sheers. Sheers will be presented as a Fellow of Aberystwyth University during the University’s Graduation Week celebrations in July 2013.

Wednesday 29 May at Google’s Big Tent at 7pm
Damian Walford Davies and Owen Sheers will be celebrating the centenary of the birth of RS Thomas.  Eleven poets have been invited to write poems in response to poems by RS Thomas; these will be published as a limited edition by Hay Festival Press. The gala reading will also include Gillian Clarke, Menna Elfyn, Mererid Hopwood, Emyr Lewis, Anna Lewis, Glyn Maxwell, Grahame Davies and Simon Armitage and the event is chaired by the Hay Festival International Fellow for 2012–2013, Eurig Salisbury.

Saturday 1 June at Landmarc 100 Stage at 2.30pm
Damian Walford Davies will once again take the stage on the 1st June to talk to Jill Piercy and Peter Lord. Brenda Chamberlain’s iconic book The Water-castle has just been published in the Library Of Wales series. Her biographer Jill Piercy discusses her life and work with art historian Peter Lord, who is trying to preserve Chamberlain’s murals on Bardsey, and poet Damian Walford Davies, who has just edited her play The Protagonists, begun on the Greek island of Hydra during the Colonels’ Coup of 1967.

Saturday 1 June at Llwyfan Cymru – Welsh Stage at 10am
Owen Sheers will read from his new work Pink Mist, which is a verse drama about camaraderie in modern warfare as seen through the stories of serving soldiers in Afghanistan, their families and friends. Drawn from interviews with wounded veterans, Pink Mist is a lyric narrative of rare dramatic and emotional intensity. The session will be introduced by Francesca Rhydderch, former editor of New Welsh Review.

Saturday 1 June at Digital Stage at 5.30pm
Francesca Rhydderch will take the stage with fellow writes Alicia Foster and Joanna Rossiter on Saturday 1 June in a session that will be chaired by Lisa Dwan. Warpaint by Foster is a compelling tale of truth and lies, tragedy and black comedy, loosely based on the lives of four painters during World War II. The Sea Change by Rossiter is a haunting and moving novel about a mother and a daughter, caught between a tsunami and a war. In Rhydderch’s The Rice Paper Diaries, four interweaving accounts relate the intimate havoc wrought by military conflict on individual lives.

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