Three leading local writers - Cath Barton, Rhiannon Hooson and Nigel Jarrett - in conversation with David Holman sharing their work and writing experiences. Find out what motivates and inspires them and what part getting published and winning awards can play.

Cath Barton is an English writer who lives in Abergavenny. She won the New Welsh Writing Awards AmeriCymru Prize for the Novella 2017 and 2nd place in the Dorset Fiction Award, October 2017. Her novella The Plankton Collector will be published by New Welsh Review in September 2018. She has had stories published in The Lonely Crowd, Fictive Dream, Spelk and more, and is a regular contributor to Wales Arts Review. Cath has been awarded a place on the 2018 Literature Wales Mentoring Scheme and is currently working on a collection of short stories inspired by the paintings and drawings of Hieronymus Bosch.

Dr Rhiannon Hooson is an award-winning Welsh poet. She has performed her work at literature festivals and venues across Europe and the UK, including London, Milan and the Hay festival, and been featured in the Guardian, Magma, and Poetry Wales among others. She has won major accolades for her work, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Her first collection, The Other City, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year, and was described by the judges as "Stunning... at a pitch of achievement many of us will not reach across a career."

Nigel Jarrett is a former daily-newspaperman and a regular contributor to the Wales Arts Review and other publications, including Jazz Journal and Acumen poetry magazine. He is a poet, novelist, and story writer. His first collection of stories, Funderland, was warmly reviewed in the Independent, the Guardian, and the Times, and long-listed for the Edge Hill prize. His latest collection, Who Killed Emil Kreisler? was published in 2016. He is a winner of the Rhys Davies prize for short fiction and, in 2016, the inaugural Templar Shorts award. Next year sees the publication of his short fiction pamphlet, A Gloucester Trilogy.

Chairperson David Holman