Hanan Issa is a Welsh-Iraqi writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her publications include her poetry collection My Body Can House Two Hearts, Welsh Plural: Essays on the Future of Wales and her children’s poetry anthology And I Hear Dragons. Her winning monologue With Her Back Straight was performed at the Bush Theatre as part of the Hijabi Monologues. She is part of the writers room for Channel 4’s award-winning series We Are Lady Parts. Her work has been featured on Radio 3 and Radio 4. Her short film The Golden Apple, a Ffilm Cymru/ BBC Wales commission, is available on iPlayer. She was the 2023 Hay International Fellow and is the current National Poet of Wales until 2027.
@hananelizabethissa on Instagram
Gwyneth Lewis MBE was the first National Poet of Wales and wrote the words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. She’s won the Wales Book of the Year for poetry in English and in Welsh and, most recently, in the 2025 Creative Non-Fiction category. Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling (Calon, 2024), a memoir about being emotionally abused was shortlisted in the Literature category of the Sky Arts Awards. First Rain in Paradise (Bloodaxe, 2025), is Gwyneth’s tenth book of poetry.
https://gwynethlewis.com/site/
Author's Website: https://gwynethlewis.com/site/
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