Owen Sheers

Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales. His first collection of poetry, The Blue Book, was published by Seren in 2000 and was short-listed for the Forward Best First collection prize. Skirrid Hill (2005) won a Somerset Maugham Award. He was one of the Poetry Society’s 20 Next Generation Poets.

He also writes prose, including Resistance in 2008, published by Faber and Faber. This has been translated into ten languages and is due to be developed into a
film soon. He has also written a novella, White Ravens, and a work of non-fiction, The Dust Diaries, a biographical narrative set in Zimbabwe.

Owen was the writer and presenter of the BBC’s fantastic series, A Poet’s Guide to Britain,
in which he explored the backgrounds, and backdrops, behind some of Britain best
loved poems like Wordsworth’s Composed upon Westminster Bridge and Plath’s Wuthering Heights.