USW Visiting Fellow wins Wales Book of the Year 2024

Tom Bullough, Visiting Fellow and former PhD student at the University of South Wales (USW), has been named the winner of Wales Book of the Year 2024 with his ‘modern classic’, Sarn Helen.

His highly acclaimed book, described as an ‘immersive and evocative non-fictional journey through Wales’, documents Tom’s walk along the old Roman road that runs from Neath in the south to Caerhun on the north coast of Wales.

It aims to be a revelatory meditation on the nation’s past, present and future, and includes conversations with climate and ecology experts, who explain in stark detail the possible and immediate effects of the climate emergency on Wales and the world.

Tom’s words paint Wales’ beautiful landscape, wildlife and nature as an idyllic backdrop to the contrasting bleak warning about the impending destruction to the environment. Sarn Helen also won the 2023 Waterstones Welsh Book of the Year.

Sarn Helen is illustrated by the award-winning and internationally acclaimed artist, Jackie Morris, whose depictions of many red-list species are peppered throughout the book.

During the Wales Book of the Year award ceremony, Tom first took to the stage to collect the prize for the best English-language Creative Non-Fiction book, before returning to be crowned winner of the overall Wales Book of the Year 2024 award, receiving a total prize of £4,000 and a specially commissioned trophy, designed and created by the artist Angharad Pearce Jones.

Speaking at the Award Ceremony, judge Dylan Moore said of Sarn Helen: “Despite the fierce competition from fabulous and fantastical fiction and dazzling verse, this book stood out. It is the one that will stay with us longest. The depth of its explorations and stark facts, and the momentous import of its message, carries it beyond the prize and into the realm of a true modern classic.

“We thank Tom for his passionate advocacy for the planet we all call home, which is written throughout the text as beautifully and deeply as his love for Wales. He magically portrays this country as a microcosm of planet Earth, through precise place and across historical time. In this unique book, the climate emergency is faced full-on, and Tom lays out in the starkest terms, the gravity of the situation faced by all of us.”

Emeritus Professor Jane Aaron won the Welsh language creative non-fiction prize for Cranogwen, a study of extraordinary Welsh teacher and poet Cranogwen, aka Sarah Jane Rees, who campaigned for gender equality in Wales.

USW Creative Writing graduate Glyn Edwards won the Nation Cymru People’s Choice award for his poetry collection, In Orbit.

Each year, the Wales Book of the Year awards celebrate talented Welsh writers who excel in a variety of literary forms in both Welsh and English. There are four categories in both languages – Poetry, Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction and Children and Young People.

Each category winner takes home a prize of £1,000. One category winner in each language goes on to win the Overall Award, earning a further £3,000 and claiming the title, Wales Book of the Year. Although it has existed in some form since the 1960s, Wales Book of the Year has been run by the literature development charity, Literature Wales, since 2004.

Artistic Director of Literature Wales, Leusa Llewelyn said: “This year, Literature Wales marks 20 years of running this award which has given so many writers a platform, and of course thousands of pounds’ worth of prizes. We’ve brought readers and writers together in Cardiff, Caernarfon, Merthyr Tydfil and Aberystwyth to celebrate and be celebrated.

“Meanwhile, our planet has seen rapid changes. Tom articulates beautifully in his foreword to Sarn Helen the importance of learning about and valuing our little pocket of land to make sense of the ‘inconceivably vast’ threat to our planet.”