Bardic Books will be welcoming Jane Fraser to Llantwit Major Writing Circle on Tuesday 17 March at 7.00pm. Jane Fraser is an award-winning fiction writer, based in Gower. She is the author of two novels: ‘Advent’ (HONNO 2021) which won the Society of Authors’ Paul Torday Memorial Prize for a debut novel in English in 2022, and her latest novel ‘Weights and Measures’ (WATERMARK PRESS 2025) as well as two collections of short stories, ‘The South Westerlies’ (SALT 2019) and ‘Connective Tissue’ (SALT 2022). Jane’s work has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of its ‘Short Works’ series.
If you would like to join us, please contact Kath at bardicvintagebooks@gmail.com

Jane Fraser will be in conversation with Alan Bilton about her latest novel, Weights and Measures, Wednesday 18th March, 6pm, Waterstones, Swansea.

Weights and Measures is an unhurried historical novel that ends as surprisingly for the characters as the reader. It follows an outwardly ordinary family, during the early days of World War II, exploring inner lives of fear, passion, and hope.

Jim Froom is hiding things: his gambling, his black market antics, the fact that now his son William has enlisted, he is haunted afresh by the carnage of the Great War. Mary Froom is a capable woman, perpetually frustrated. Mother to four – five if she counts Jim, who needs watching too – guiltily, she lives for the day when her youngest will be out from under her feet at primary school. Teddy is thirteen, but already obliged to fill William's shoes. Working in the family butcher’s shop, he dreams of becoming a surgeon, a dream as unattainable as that of his sister Dora, eldest Froom child, returned to Swansea from a life of relative freedom in London.

Preoccupied with their secrets, they live in almost suspended animation, waiting for an end to the weeks and months of apparent nothing – the so-called 'phoney war.’ None of them are prepared for the real war when it begins – devastating and senseless, reconfiguring their lives forever. But out of tragedy, there is a speck of hope…

“Against the epic backdrop of the Second World War, Fraser’s intimate love letter to Swansea bursts with passion, humour, and heart—a sweeping family saga so compelling readers won’t want to put it down.” Euros Lyn, BAFTA-winning Film and Television Director

“A vivid and evocative historical novel which captures the atrocities of war through the lens of human experience – the luminous prose utterly transports you to the Froom family household...” Fflur Dafydd, Novelist and Screenwriter

Alan Bilton is the author of At Dawn, Two Nightingales and The End of the Yellow House.

Attendance is free, and there's no need to book in advance.

Alan Bilton delivered the Bird Research Lecture on ‘Nightingales and Nightmares: The Subversive and the Supernatural in Central European Comic Opera at Cardiff University on February 11th.

Bilton discussed his new novel, At Dawn, Two Nightingales, a comic opera in fictional form, set in Eighteenth Century Bohemia in the time of Mozart. In this session, he will discuss comic opera, singspiel, puppet theatre,  and the idea of 'forbidden' poetry in 18th Century Europe. His paper explored the balance between the supernatural and the comic in Central European Singspiel, interrogating how shifts in tone and genre prefigure notions of the Uncanny, the Surreal and the Magical in Twentieth and Twenty First Century thought. The talk also explored how popular songs and entertainment were frequently viewed as dangerous vehicles for sedition and revolution during the Eighteenth Century, poetry transitioning from high to low culture, and in this way attacked as a means of agitating the masses and fermenting revolution.

You can read an interview with Alan Bilton in the new edition of the brilliant Seventh Quarry magazine, alongside new poetry from India, Albania, the UK, US, the Czech Republic and beyond! https://seventhquarrypress.com/

The award winning Jane Fraser will discuss her brilliant new home-front novel, Weights and Measures, with the wonderful Carolyn Lewis (Time, Again) in Caldicot Library, Wednesday 11th March, 10am. All welcome and free entry. Woodstock Way, Caldicot, NP26 5DB

Cultural Institute
Literary Salon Series

Thursday 19 February

18:00 – 19:00

Taliesin Create, Singleton Campus, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP

‘Scenes from a Tragedy’
Carole Hailey in conversation with
Alan Bilton

Scenes from a Tragedy by Carole Hailey
When journalist Carly Atherton decides to investigate Daniel Taylor, the pilot of a mysteriously crashed plane, the only family member who will speak to her is his sister.

Glamorous and self-assured, Izzy Taylor seems happy to take Carly into her confidence, filling her in on Daniel’s family history and the events leading up to the crash. 

But when Daniel’s widow finally agrees to an interview, everything Izzy has said is called into question, and Carly realizes she has been drawn into a story far darker than she could possibly have imagined.

Because the bonds that shape us can also tear us apart – and sometimes there are monsters living among us, hiding in plain sight…

About the author...
Carole Hailey abandoned a career as a lawyer to study first an MA then a PhD in Creative Writing (the latter at Swansea University). Scenes from a Tragedy is her second novel. Carole’s debut novel, The Silence Project, was published in 2023 and was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick, a Waterstones’ and Independent Booksellers’ Book of the Month and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize. Carole lives in Wales with her husband and two rescue dogs.

In partnership with Atlantic Books and Cover to Cover Bookshop
*Please note: Event delivered in English

TICKETS:

https://bit.ly/scenesfromatragedy

Catch Jane Fraser in conversation with Roy Noble on BBC Wales, Sunday 14th December, 5pm, talking wartime Swansea, butchers’ shops, and the art of the historical novel.

Alan Bilton will be talking Folk Horror, Magic Realism, and the Uncanny with Julie Ann Rees, author of the brilliantly terrifying Sea Glass in the Taliesin Café Bar, Swansea University, Monday 24th November, 6pm. All welcome

You can read Jane Fraser’s moving, thoughtful, and deeply personal essay on the writing of Weights and Measures in Nation Cymru at ahttps://nation.cymru/culture/on-writing-weights-and-measures-a-story-made-in-swansea/

Watermark is thrilled and honoured to announce that our next publication will be Jane Fraser’s enormously moving and beautifully observed wartime novel, Weights and Measures, a sensitive, touching, heart-breaking account of an ordinary Welsh family’s experience of the ‘phoney’ war.

Weights and Measures will be published on October 31st, but is available to pre-order from Watermark Press now.

“Against the epic backdrop of the Second World War, Fraser’s intimate love letter to Swansea bursts with passion, humour, and heart—a sweeping family saga so compelling readers won’t want to put it down.”
Euros Lyn, BAFTA-winning Film and Television Director

Alan Bilton will be in conversation with two exciting young poets about their debut poetry collections. Free entry and all welcome.

Lucy’s collection, Dear Ceiling, is a moving exploration of grief journeying through drifting nocturnal dreamscapes and images.

Ben’s collection, Breakfast with the Scavengers, is a funny, bizarre and tender surrealist phantasmagoria, inspired by Ben’s new life in Mexico.

Carolyn will be in conversation with Alan Bilton about her latest novel Time, Again. Carolyn will also be discussing her revised edition of The Short Story – A Perfect Recipe: A Guide to Writing Short Stories.

Saturday July 12th at 2.00pm – Cover to Cover Bookshop, 58 Newton Rd, Mumbles, Swansea SA3 4BQ