Edited on this occasion by Dr Alan Bilton and Dr Anne Lauppe-Dunbar from Swansea University, it is a vibrant mixture of work by Creative Writing staff, students and well-known writers with established reputations.

Alan’s lively introduction says: “The raison d’être of the review is to showcase the work of both writers and students connected to the Creative Writing programme at Swansea University, whilst simultaneously reaching out to present striking and original work from around the globe ... This year we have lovelorn snowmen, man-eating pianos, Welsh haiku, ghosts, frog fish and Arab-Israeli geo-politics: trust me, where else would you go to find this stuff? We’re also delighted to include an interview with the University’s Royal Writing Fellow, Dr. Gwyneth Lewis, a review of dramatist D.J. Britton’s hugely successful production of ‘The Wizard, The Goat, and The Man who Won the War’ in Singapore, and new short stories by our very own Booker-nominated Professor Stevie Davies,  the Berlin-based author, Kate Brown, and Tania Hershman, Britain’s greatest exponent of flash-fiction .... Swansea’s cauldron is popping and fizzing with creative energy – something is very definitely in the water (or the rain).

Launches, lectures, workshops, festivals, readings, plays: little wonder that the teaching staff at the University find it so hard to make time for the important work like admin and photocopying hand outs. Still, they struggle on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly to the bar… Swansea thus acts as a revolving door for Bohemian, literary types, (you can barely move your bookmark without tripping over Jon Gower for example) but it’s always particularly gratifying to welcome back graduates from the Creative Writing programme, now making their ways across the turbulent seas of the grown up publishing world.

Jane Fraser’s haibun ‘Urodynamics’ has been chosen as the winner of the 2012 British Haiku award, whilst Dave Shannon’s short story has made it through to the longlist for the BBC Short Story Unit. Roshi Fernando, whose work is published by Bloomsbury and Knopf, has been generous with her time to conduct classes in the short story (and this with a new deadline looming!), Jennifer Cryer, author of Breathing on Glass, has spoken to students about her experiences with editors, publishers and readers, E.S.G. Wride has seen her work performed in Swansea, Al Kellerman is now the poetry editor of Parthian, and my illustrious co-editor, Anne Lauppe Dunbar, has secured a top London agent for her first novel, Dark Mermaids. All of which is to say:  the Creative Writing programme is less a foot in the door than a push on the handle, a rap on the knocker, a yank on the chain … but that’s enough metaphors.

The Swansea Review will be back next year, which is also the centenary of that Thomas fellow. Remember: there is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright. Discuss.”

Email: A.M.Lauppe-Dunbar@swansea.ac.uk