Month: April 2014
Who’s Who
Perhaps we are being a little unfair saying these bursary recipients are ‘unknown’ writers. Perhaps we need to get out more? In the circles they mix in they are probably very well known. Just not in the real world…
And to say that they are members of the Taffia, maybe that’s unfair too. After all, as can be seen from the list below these people are just ordinary, struggling writers… Lol 🙂
This year we have a few new entries to the trough but we also see a few old names moving up the cash charts too:
Euron Griffith gets £5,000 – yet has links to S4C / BBC Wales, so can’t possibly need the cash or the exposure.
Sam Roads gets £1,389 – he is a Cardiff entrepreneur, co-owner of four local businesses, so you would wonder why he needs the money?
Mary-Ann Constantine gets £1,500 – she is a Senior Fellow and Project Leader, and works for the National Library of Wales, surely she doesn’t need the money?
Caroline Ross gets £4,000 – she’s a Member of Academi / Literaure Wales (say no more).
Robat Gruffudd gets £5,500 – and he is the founder of Gwasg y Lolfa (Lolfa Press), who get arts council money for that!
Samathan Wynne-Rhydderch gets £4,058 – who is she, what has she written to be getting all this money?
Karen Owen gets £6,000 – she is a former Producer of Religious Programmes at BBC Cymru and is way up the cash charts with her awards.
Simon Brooks gets £2,003 – Dr Simon Brooks is a Lecturer in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University and so has a tidy salary anyway!
Catrin Gerallt gets £3,000 – she is/has been on the LW Management Board / Assistant Editor for Welsh Current Affairs, BBC Wales / Head of Communications for ‘Cardiff 2008’ promoting Cardiff as an European Capital of Culture / Radio Wales – very well connected…
Helen Buhaenko gets £1,750 – she works for Oxfam.
Scrutiny / scrutiny / scrutiny!!! ITV Wales – are you listening? Want to do a programme? Maybe someone will tell them!
New Troughers Announced
This month sees yet another £81,000 of taxpayers money dished out to so-called “writers” no-one has ever heard of. True, there are a few unpublished writers in there too (six we counted, although LW say it is eleven) but once again the vast majority of the cash is gifted to “published” writers – most, if not all, are unknown, talentless and worse still – previous bursary recipients! Disgusting you might say? Well, we’ll agree with you.
But if this serious business of handing out taxpayers money without scrutiny wasn’t enough, Literature Wales even have the gall to announce to the world that they have awarded over £1 million in Writers’ Bursaries to their friends and family!
And out of that million quid the only “famous” writers they can come up with are: Belinda Bauer, Lloyd Jones, Daniel Morden & Gwyneth Lewis. Yes, you’re right again, no-one outside Wales has ever heard of them.
How sad that in this, Dylan Thomas’s centenary year, LW still can’t give 100% of its financial support to new writers!
Link to who got what this year – click here.
LiteratureWales 