Miscellaneous Events: Wales Week 2009: Owen Sheers in Conversation with Paul Watkins

March 5, 2009

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In celebration of Wales Week in New York, prominent Welsh novelists Owen Sheers and Paul Watkins discussed their careers with The New York Public Library's David Ferriero.

Owen Sheers is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the 1999 Vogue Young Writer's Award; his first collection of poetry, The Blue Book (Seren, 2000), was short-listed for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward Prize Best 1st Collection 2001. Sheers's first novel, Resistance (Faber, 2008) won a 2008 Hospital Club Creative Award and was short-listed for the Writers Guild Best Book Award. His recent collaboration with composer Rachel Portman, The Water Diviner's Tale, an oratorio for children, was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms 2007.

Watkins's novels Calm at Sunset, won Britain's Encore Prize for best second novel, and Archangel won the 1996 Holtby Prize from the Royal Society of Literature. He is regularly compared to Hemingway and Conrad and his books have been translated into nine languages.