Mererid Hopwood is one of Wales’ most celebrated Welsh-language poets and the only woman to have won the three main prestigious prizes for literature at the National Eisteddfod – Wales’ National Culture Festival. She has been Children’s Laureate for Wales and was awarded the Glyndŵr prize for her contribution to literature in both Welsh and English. Her first collection of poetry, Nes Draw (Gomer, 2015) won the Welsh-language poetry category at Wales Book of the Year, 2016 and was featured on the WLE bookshelf in 2016. She was the Hay Festival Creative Wales International Fellow for 2020-2021. She has translated work from German into Welsh such as Der kaukasische Kreidekreis by Brecht for the Welsh-language National Theatre of Wales, and she also won Translators' House Wales Translation Challenge 2013. Her non-fiction book Dychmygu Iaith / Imagining Language (University of Wales Press, 2022) was also featured on the WLE bookshelf in 2022. Mae / To Be (Barddas, 2025) is her second volume of poetry.

In 2003, her poem ‘Dadeni’ featured in the film Dal Yma: Nawr, that starred the actors and musicians Siân Phillips, Ioan Gruffudd, Matthew Rhys and Rhys Ifans.

She works tirelessly to try and popularize cynghanedd (an intricate system of alliteration and rhyme particular to Welsh poetry), especially amongst girls and young people. She was the Bardd Plant (Children’s Poet) in 2005.

She was selected by the Exchange to participate in the first Writers' Chain translation workshop held in India in 2008 where she collaborated with poets from the UK and India. She also won Translators' House Wales Translation Challenge 2013, with a translation of three poems by Cuban poet, Victor Rodriguez Nunez.

She has been teaching for much of the last thirty years in the field of language and literature, teaching in all sorts of circumstances, from university to night school, from courses for the youngest to secondary school pupils.

Mererid won Wales PEN Cymru's Emyr Humphreys Award in 2020, and she was the adjudicator for Her Gyfieithu 2020.

Mererid Hopwood came to the Chair of the Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth University in January 2021.