All Shall be Well

All Shall Be Well, Honno's 25th anniversary anthology, brings together a wonderful and absorbing collection of writing by Welsh women taken from the fiction and non-fiction anthologies published by the press over the last quarter of a century.Fiction writers such as Patricia Duncker, Sian James, Sarah Jackman and Jo Mazelis contribute tales of tangled relationships, discovery loss and love, told with wit and compassion, while non fiction ranges from the horror of Belsen through the eyes of a Welsh nurse, to the swinging sixties with Molly Parkin.Since it was formed, Honno has published anthologies on subjects such as motherhood, travel, change and wicked women. The result is a thrilling range of work from new and, by now, established writers.Speaking of the 25 pieces chosen for the anthology, editors Penny Thomas and Stephanie Tillotson said: "All the pieces here are characterised by skill, be that a skill in story-telling, or dexterity in language, rhetorical or aesthetic, a talent for drawing the reader into an experience, or an ability to create a sense of time or place."Many of these pieces respond to the changes that have taken place in women's social and political experiences in Wales over the past century and a half. Honno has mapped an undoubted realignment of emphasis in what we choose to write about. The sense of lives half-lived has receded, powerlessness and poverty has diminished. Our lives have changed beyond the recognition of our grandmothers, but though much has altered, much is still the same.