Mihangel Morgan – författare

The first anthology of its kind in Wales, which finally sheds light on a largely hidden queer cultural history with the careful selection of over 40 short stories (1837-2018) including work by John Sam Jones, Sian James, Rhys Davies, Deborah Kay Davies, Aled Islwyn, and Kate North.New translations of Kate Roberts, Mihangel Morgan, Jane Edwards, Pennar Davies and Dylan Huw make available their compelling stories for the first time to a non-Welsh speaking readership.An accessible but scholarly introduction places the writers and their stories in their historical and literary contexts.In these stories gender refuses to be fixed: a dashing travelling companion is not quite who he seems in the intimate darkness of a mail coach, a girl on the cusp of adulthood gamely takes her father's place as head of the house, and an actor and patron are caught up in dangerous game-playing. In the more fantastical tales there are talking rats, flirtations with fascism, and escape from a post-virus 'utopia'. These are stories of sexual awakening, coming out and redefining one's place in the world.Release and a certain heady license may be found in the distant cities of Europe or north Africa, but the stories are for the most part located in familiar Welsh settings - a schoolroom, a provincial town, a mining village, a tourist resort, a sacred island. The intensity of desire, whether overt, playful, or coded, makes this a rich and often surprising collection that reimagines what being queer and Welsh has meant in different times and places.

One of the most exciting works of modern Welsh-language fiction, available in English for the first time. The dull life of unemployed academic Dr Jones changes forever when he sees a young man naked on a building top, threatening to jump to his death. Persuaded to come down, the stranger is befriended by Jones. Melog says he is exiled from Laxaria, a country colonised by Sacria, which has banned the Laxarian language and destroyed its books. He has come to Wales in search of a lost Laxarian manuscript, the Imalic, the only surviving copy of his country's legends.Drawing on the themes of cats, non-communication and political oppression, Melog is at once a tender story of friendship and a satire of the purpose and intent which dominate people's lives. One of the most distinctive Welsh novels of recent years, it is eloquently translated by Christopher Meredith.Mihangel Morgan lives in Aberystwyth, where he lectures in modern Welsh literature.Christopher Meredith is a prizewinnng novelist in the English language. Several of his poetry collections are published by Seren.