New Welsh Review 135 (summer 2024)

Bringing together the best of Wales' review-essays, including a comparison of new editions of nature classics, 'Back to the Land' by Pippa Marland. The books under review, Thomas Firbank's 'I Bought a Mountain' and Margiad Evans' 'Autobiography' take contrasting blustering and humble approaches to stepping over the sub/urban doorstep into nature. A showcase of new nonfiction, previewing forthcoming titles from some of Wales' key English-language publishers, exploring books on anti-Welsh media vitriol covering the early Manic Street Preachers, and historical flooding and the riches of an Eton-owned Benedictine fishery on the Gwent Levels. In original fiction: a wonderful story about a teenage boy on the cusp of bodily and emotional change, 'Trout', by Satterday Shaw, and a second, finely crafted story about the effect of geographical dislocation on teenage identity emergence, 'Another Place' by Philippa Holloway, set on Crosby beach. Plus Editorial by Gwen Davies and a new opinion feature, Last Page, by Richard Lewis Davies, in which the writers note that magazines in Wales are undergoing a transition, during which readers and subscribers will need to step up to the plate if a commitment to expressing - without interference - our particular place and time, is to be maintained.

Auteur

Satterday Shaw writes fiction for adults and young adults. When she was a teenager, she wished she could be somebody else for a day, and writing is the closest she's got. Her stories and articles have been published in Mslexia, the London Magazine, Wasafiri, the Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology, Wales Arts Review and other places. She lives in Eryri. Past teaching includes writing workshops for adults, including Creative Writing students, women with long-term mental health problems. She has also taught young adults, including Roma teenagers. She has worked in anti-racist education, as a family carer, and as a film and video editor.