Owen Sheers

Owen Sheers is a native of Abergavenny and a graduate of Oxford University. His first collection of poetry, The Blue Book, was shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward Prize Best 1st Collection in 2001.

His début prose work The Dust Diaries, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and won the Welsh Book of the Year 2005. Skirrid Hill (2005) his 2nd poetry collection won a Society of Authors Somerset Maugham Award and has been studied as a text on both the WJEC and AQA A level syllabuses. His 2007 novel ‘Resistance’, an imagining of what might have unfolded if Nazi troops had occupied a remote Welsh community during the Second World War has been adapted into a film starring Andrea Riseborough. In 2011, Owen wrote the script for The Passion, the National Theatre Wales 72 hour site-specific production in Port Talbot starring and directed by Michael Sheen, described by the Observer as ‘the theatrical event of the decade’. He was the first ever artist in residence for the Welsh Rugby Union, with his resulting work of non-fiction, Calon, published in 2013.In the summer of 2014 Owen’s poem Mametz Wood was staged by National Theatre Wales as a site specific production in ancient woodland near Usk. It was highly critically acclaimed, described as being one of the most innovative productions to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.