João Morais is from Cardiff and has Portuguese heritage on his father's side of the family who hail from Cabo Verde. He’s recently completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. He was a prize-winner in the New Welsh Writing Awards 2021 Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Theme or Setting, and has been shortlisted for the Academi Rhys Davies Short Story Prize, the Percy French Prize for Comic Verse and the All Wales Comic Verse Award. He won the 2013 Terry Hetherington Prize for Young Writers, and has been selected twice for a Hay Festival’s Writers at Work residency. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including New Welsh Reader, Roundyhouse, Popshot, The Ghastling, Cheval and Rarebit (Parthian) and New Welsh Short Stories (Seren). His short story collection, Things That Make The Heart Beat Faster, was published by Parthian in 2018.
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