H. L. Williams

Hullo there. I've been around a long time now writing poetry, novels, short stories, biography and other non-fiction, but I'm still here and still writing. My latest novel, Love Child, is due out later this year and University of Wales Press have just brought out a book about my life and work in the Writers of Wales series. It's simply called 'Herbert Williams' and is by Phil Carradice.

I was born in Aberystwyth, that seat of learning on the Ceredigion coast, but I never went to university. At the age of 15 I was struck down by tuberculosis and spent two years in a sanatorium back in the late 1940s, when the only treatment was fresh air and bedrest - plenty of both. I tell the story of this traumatic time in my short novel A Severe Case of Dandruff. When I came out of the 'San' I felt too old to go back to school - I was then 18 - and was lucky enough to get a job as a reporter with a local weekly. I went from paper to paper before joining the BBC as a radio producer in the Seventies but quickly turned freelance. All this time I was always writing, and in the past 15 years I've brought out four novels, two poetry collections and a biography of that neglected genius John Cowper Powys. The Marionettes made me the first winner of the Cinnamon Press Novella Prize. I'm lucky enough to be married to Dorothy and we live in Cardiff.