Award Night

For The Dylan Thomas Prize 2006

When the possibility first arose that a Welsh writer might win the Dylan Thomas Prize, I thought - we can't give a Welsh prize to a Welsh author. The whole world will think we are biased judges. Fortunately, this worry was cancelled out by the knowledge that we could not discriminate against a writer because they were Welsh.

We then turned to the task of finding, as Professor Peter Stead had phrased it, 'the voice of a new generation of writers'.

All of the books were dazzling. They would have been accomplishments of a lifetime for authors of any age, but to see such excellence from writers under 30 was both humbling and unforgettable.

I was particularly taken by the work of American writer Liza Ward, who based her novel on a killing spree that took place in Nebraska in the late 50's. This event, known as The Starkweather Murders, has captured the imaginations of film makers like Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino and Terrence Malick. It also fueled the imagination of the great American short story writer Flannery O'Connor in her most famous story, 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.' What sets Liza Ward apart from these other renditions of the murders is that her own grandparents were victims in the killing spree. This fact, hovering behind the fiction, added extraordinary force and tension to the narrative.

In the end, however, I chose Welsh writer Rachel Tresize, for her outstanding collection of short stories based largely in the Rhondda Valley. This was no rosy-tinted, How-Green-Was-My-Valley vision of Wales. The characters who populate the pages of her book are pared down to the bare bones of their unenviable lives. The stories are not all perfect. Some, indeed, lagged far behind the others. But the voice which rose up from these pages was not like any other I had read before. It was something utterly new.

The judges were not unanimous in their final decision. Indeed, one was vehemently opposed to Tresize. Our final meeting took place only hours before the prize was due to be announced. During those tense moments in a conference room at The Dragon Hotel, I was reminded, as we explained our choices, of a film clip I once saw of radio announcers in the American south smashing records of Beatles songs rather than play them on the air. The songs and voices which were to transform music history were too unfamiliar, too new and, like all new things, they were met in some places with suspicion, outrage and disdain. These are the barriers which new work of any kind must break through in order to survive.

I am glad Tresize has won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Much will be expected of her in the months and years ahead, but I am confident she will endure. An original and brilliant voice has risen from our valleys, not only to tell the stories of the Welsh, but to resonate across the world.

Paul Watkins,
EDS Dylan Thomas Prize Judge