Cynan Jones

Cynan Jones

Visit Website
 Cynan Jones

Author Cynan Jones (1975) was born near the coastal town of Aberaeron in west Wales.

The Long Dry (Parthian, 2006 and republished by Granta, 2014) won a Society of Authors' Betty Trask Award and saw the author selected as the 2008 Hay Festival Scritture Giovani. It is translated into a number of languages including Arabic, Albanian, French, Italian,Turkish, Dutch and Spanish.

Everything I Found on the Beach (Parthian, 2011 and republished by Granta, 2014) is published in French, German and Italian.

The Dig (Granta, 2014) won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014, the Wales Fiction Book of the Year 2015, and was long and shortlisted for a number of prizes internationally. A chapter of the book was also shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award and won the readers' vote. The Dig is translated into Armenian, French, German, Macedonian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish and Dutch, in which language it was longlisted for the Europese Literatuurprijs .

Cove (Granta, 2016) was shortlisted for the 2017 Welsh Book of the Year Award and chosen for the 2017 Exchange Bookcase. This short novel has been translated into Portuguese, French, Italian and Dutch, in which language it too was longlisted for the Europese Literatuurprijs. A Spanish edition was published in March 2021.

Jones' most recent book Stillicide (Granta, 2019) is a collection of twelve stories originally commissioned by BBC Radio 4. Stillicide is translated into Dutch, and Spanish and Portuguese rights have been agreed. It was also shortlisted to Wales Book of the Year Award in 2020.

The above mentioned works are all published in the United States.

Jones's short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta and The New Yorker and several have been broadcast on radio. In 2017, he won the BBC National Short Story Award for his 'lyrical, tension-fuelled' short story, The Edge of the Shoal.

Jones also scripted an episode of the Welsh BAFTA-winning television crime drama Hinterland and in 2018 published Three Tales for children (Gomer), which is translated into Dutch.

He has tutored for Literature Wales and the Arvon Foundation, and designed and presents Curtis Brown Creative's online Writing Short Stories course. He started in the role of RLF Writing Fellow at Aberystwyth University in September 2016 and in 2019 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

His latest novel, Stillicide (Granta, 2019), was selected to our 2020–21 Bookcase.

Watch Cynan discuss and read from Stillicide here.

Bookshelf