Carys Davies writer in residence in Amsterdam
10 July 2024
Welsh writer Carys Davies will be staying at the Amsterdam Writers Residency from July 2nd to August 11th, upon invitation by the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
Carys Davies’s debut novel West (2018) was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, longlisted for the Europese Literatuurprijs, Runner Up for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second novel The Mission House (2020) was The Sunday Times 2020 Novel Of The Year. Her third novel, Clear, came out in the spring of 2024. The Dutch translation of Clear is expected to be published in October 2024 by publishing house Meulenhoff. All of her novels were translated into Dutch by Nicolette Hoekmeijer.
Davies is also the author of two collections of short stories, Some New Ambush (2007) and The Redemption of Galen Pike (2014), which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She is the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award and a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy.
Born in Wales, she lived and worked for twelve years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh.
'I'm so looking forward to coming to Amsterdam and to having time and space to write in such a beautiful and vibrant city’, Davies notes about her Amsterdam residency.
‘I'm in the very early stages of writing a new novel in which water will be very important, and it's hard to think of a better place to be while I'm dreaming about that. Visual art, too, is a great inspiration for me in my work, so when I'm not writing I will be poking around in the city's amazing collections.’
She also looks forward to being in Amsterdam in the run-up to the publication of her most recent novel, Clear. ‘As ever, it's been a great pleasure to work with my wonderful translator, Nicolette Hoekmeijer.'
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