Welsh Writers Showcase Contemporary Fiction at Indian Literary Events
We are delighted to continue working with our Indian partners and grateful to our funders for the support that allowed us to take two exciting Welsh women writers to India at the start of 2026. Accompanied by LAF director Alexandra Büchler, award-winning novelists Angharad Price and Francesca Reece visited Kozhikode and Kolkata, where they spoke at the 9th Kerala Literature Festival and the 49th Kolkata Book Fair. The visit coincided with the launch of A New Welsh Tapestry, an anthology of short stories by contemporary Welsh women writers from Sampark Publications, aimed at introducing these compelling voices to the English-speaking Indian literary audience and international publishers.
Angharad Price is one of Wales’ most acclaimed contemporary authors. Her novel The Life of Rebecca Jones won the Wales Book of the Year Award and has been translated into multiple languages including Bengali. Known for her lyrical prose and profound exploration of memory, place, and identity, Price’s work is deeply rooted in the landscapes and communities of northwest Wales. Her recent novel Nelan a Bo – a meditation on loss, belonging, and the weight of history – was nominated for the Literature Wales Book of the Year prize in 2025. Price’s ability to render the particular textures of Welsh rural life while addressing universal themes of family, mortality, and cultural inheritance has earned her international recognition.. An experienced translator, she is Professor of Welsh and Creative Writing at Bangor University, North Wales.
Francesca Reece is a writer from the north of Wales, with roots in India on her mother’s side. Her debut novel, Voyeur, was published by Tinder Press in 2021. Her second novel, Glass Houses (2025), was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Award, and her third, Sleaze—a comedy about an expat translator living in the Mediterranean will be published in 2027 by Serpent’s Tail in the UK and Doubleday in the US. Her first two novels have been published in German translation by Fischer Verlag, and both have been optioned for potential screen adaptation. She was the recipient of the 2019 Desperate Literature Prize, and her work has appeared in The London Magazine, Banshee, Literary Review, Elle UK, and on BBC Short Works. She lives in London.
Both authors attended the Kerala Literature Festival, speaking on January on a panel titled “The Quiet and the Political in Contemporary European Writing” alongside the Swiss author Jonas Lüscher and “Power, Revolution and the European Imagination” together with the Slovak writer Lukáš Cabala, both mederated by Alexandra Büchler. Both panels explored how contemporary European writers are grappling with questions of political change, cultural identity, and the role of literature in times of upheaval. In addition, Alexandra Büchler was in conversation with Govind DC, Commissioning Editor of DC Books and one of the forces behind the Kerala Literature Festival and the Kerala literary infrastructure, discussing what the award of the UNESCO City of Literature means for Calicut and Aberystwyth Ceredigion.
They then travelled to Kolkata for the 49th Kolkata Book Fair, where all three appeared on a panel moderated by Sunandan Roy Chowdhury of Sampark Publications focused on the new anthology and contemporary Welsh writing.
A New Welsh Tapestry is an anthology featuring short stories by six Welsh women writers. It offers readers a chance to discover the versatility and range of contemporary Welsh literature. As Casi Dylan writes in the introduction, “Readers discovering these voices for the first time meet them at an exciting juncture and it is testament to the skill and sensitivity of all six authors featured here that their fiction crosses borders and boundaries, whilst remaining firmly rooted in their particular patch of earth..”
This visit built on ongoing cultural exchanges between Wales and India, strengthening literary connections and introducing new audiences to the richness of Welsh writing in both Cymraeg and English and is supported by Wales Arts International.