This week sees the publication of Fflur Dafydd’s first Welsh-language book in ten years. Lloerganiadau (Y Lolfa) is a collection of the author’s memories of childhood and her teenage years in Ceredigion under the light of the moon. This is Fflur’s first book since Awr y Locustiaid in 2010. Her award-winning novel Y Llyfrgell (2009) was developed into a popular film, Y Llyfrgell (The Library Suicides).
Fflur Dafydd says:
“It’s a collection of personal essays – not an autobiography as such, but writings on periods of time in darkness or by moonlight which are the backdrop to every story. It varies from discussing a child’s experience of being lost in the dark and a teenage girl going on an adventure with her boyfriend to a tired mother, awake all night feeding her baby. There are also writings about female astronauts, films, wild parties and friendships. There aren’t many creative non-fiction works in Welsh about the lives of ordinary women and their relationships with other people.”
“My parents have moved away from Llandysul now, so it feels like the end of an era and I felt an urge to record it. Somehow my research on the moon (for a play to be performed at the National Eisteddfod) merged with my personal memories, and allowed me to look at different periods in my life through the phases of the moon. The idea of recording my childhood has been at the back of my mind for years.”
Fflur Dafydd’s play Lloergan was written for the National Eisteddfod in Tregaron –and followed a woman from Tregaron going to the moon in 2050. This book isn’t the same as the play but it certainly provides context. Following the safety restrictions put into place because of the Coronavirus, the Eisteddfod was postponed, with the hope that both it and the play will happen next year.
Fflur Dafydd is a freelance writer and musician. Her second Welsh-language novel, Atyniad, won the Prose Medal at the National Eisteddfod in 2006, and she won the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize in 2009’s National Eisteddfod wth Y Llyfrgell, later released as a film in 2016. Her novel Twenty Thousand Saints won Hay Festival’s Most Promising Author Award in 2007. She is the creator and scriptwriter of the popular S4C drama Parch and she has scripted other TV programmes such as 35 Awr and 35 Diwrnod, and has received many BAFTA Cymru nominations. A new series by Fflur Dafydd Yr Amgueddfa (The Museum) is being filmed at the moment, and will be on S4C next spring.
Lloerganiadau by Fflur Dafydd is available now (£9.99, Y Lolfa).