Wales Literature Exchange interviewed our Bookcase author Horatio Clare about his writing and influences.

What first inspired you to become a writer, and where do your ideas come from?

Growing up in the Black Mountains of South Wales we had no television, but a great many books. My mother had been a book reviewer; by the time she became a hill farmer we did not have much money, but we lived in a remote and beautiful place, surrounded by the drama of nature. There was little division between the stories my mother told, the books I read, the life and death in the fields around us and the games my brother and I played. Books and sheep farming were all I really knew. I definitely preferred books.

How would you describe your writing?

It contains a vein of celebration: of the natural world, of life and lives. Tone and place are important to me: I love writing about people, the climate, feel and atmosphere of their lives, and the places where they live them. I am intrigued by politics and societies, from the personal to the international. Writing about individual people and particular place is the best way I know to understand the greater forces.

Which authors have influenced you the most?

At first it was nature writers like Denys Watkins-Pitchford and Ernest Dudley, who wrote Rufus, The Story of a Fox, and Jack London. And the stories my parents read aloud - Russell Hoban's The Mouse and His Child, E.B.White's Charlotte's Web, and Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart. Then great authors for young people like Robert Westall, Arthur Ransome, John Buchan and Laurie Lee. After that it was the poets. I am a devoted fan of Shelley, Coleridge, Plath, the Thomases - R.S and Dylan - Heaney, Thom Gunn. I ended up studying English at university and working in arts programmes for the BBC. I love Woolf, Ondaatje, Vonnegut and Emily Dickinson, but pretty well every book I have ever enjoyed has influenced me. The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa is my desert island novel, I think.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges that writers face today - and do you think these challenges have changed since you started writing?

Social media has made the world conversation incessant and deafening. The lack of mental peace is definitely a new challenge for writers - an empty space where you, your influences and your dreams can commune. Since I first began writing for pleasure mobile phones, the internet, email and the need to earn a living have all come crowding in. Books have more competition than ever before. But Salman Rushdie was right when he said 'Books find people to write them'. Being open to stories and prepared to fight for their lives is the same challenge Shakespeare and Marlowe faced. We cannot complain: it is a privilege to be in an ancient and honourable trade.

What are the hardest and easiest parts of being a writer?

Financial insecurity, working alone and living on your wits can all be a bit scary, but you get used to it. As time speeds up you need to be increasingly ruthless about making room for the work, without forgetting that all you are doing is arranging letters into sentences. It's not as if any of us are working on a cure for cancer. I have always found the actual business of writing a huge pleasure. It comes easily to me, which has its own perils. The challenge is to keep learning to do it better, and to remember that your pleasure is secondary to the needs of the story!

Which writer(s) from Wales would you recommend to readers, and why?

Jan Morris, one of the great writers, is also, surely, one of the most entertaining and informative. The nature writing of Jim Perrin is sublime. Cynan Jones is a phenomenal talent. Niall Griffiths is a complete original; his stories blaze. I think Jay Griffiths a genius. Owen the Sheers just keeps getting better. Carly Holmes, Fflur Dafydd, Jon Gower, Rachel Trezise, Robert Minhinnick, Christopher Meredith, Tom Bullough, Mab Jones - we have an embarrassment of riches. One day someone is going to look back at this time and say it was a golden age for the literature of Wales.

Down to the Sea in Ships by Horatio Clare was selected to the Wales Literature Exchange 2014 - 2015 Bookcase, our annual selection of recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation, and Heavy Light: A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing is selected to our 2021–22 Bookcase.