Gwyneth Lewis was Wales’ first Poet Laureate.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts). She is also a member of the Welsh Academy and spent three years in the US as a Harkness Fellow. She produced and directed documentaries at BBC Wales, but left to pursue her career as a freelance writer. She has published six books of poetry in Welsh and English. Her first English collection, Parables & Faxes (1995) won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, as was her second, Zero Gravity (1998), inspired by her astronaut cousin's voyage to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Lewis won the 2000 Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Prize for Y Llofrudd Iaith (The Language Murderer), and Keeping Mum was shortlisted in 2004. Her non-fictional Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage (2005) recounts a journey with her husband from Cardiff to North Africa. She has also written three libretti for Welsh National Opera. Lewis was elected Honorary Fellow of Cardiff University in 2005.

More information:

Lewis's official website.

Lewis's feature article for the Guardian about her sailing journey.