A Year in the Bull-box

Glyn Hughes lives in West Yorkshire, a place that has inspired much of his work. He also lived for a long period in Greece. His first full collection of poetry, 'Neighbours' (1970) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and won the Arts Council of Wales Poetry Prize. It was followed by further collections: 'Rest The Poor Struggler' (1972); and 'Best of Neighbours: New & Selected Poems' (1979); 'Dancing Out of the Dark Side' (2005); and 'Life Class' (2009). His first novel was 'Where I Used to Play on the Green' (1982), winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. It was followed by further novels, 'The Hawthorn Goddess' (1984); 'The Rape of the Rose' (1987); 'The Antique Collector' (1990), set in the Pennines and short-listed for the 1990 Whitbread Novel Award; 'Roth' (1992); and 'Bronte' (1996), a fictionalised life of the BrontA" family. His books, 'Millstone Grit' (1975), revised and republished as 'Millstone Grit: A Pennine Journey' (1987), 'Fair Prospects' (1976) and 'Glyn Hughes' Yorkshire' (1985) are works of autobiography. He is also the editor of 'Samuel Laycock: Selected Poems' (1981). He has written a number of plays for stage ('Mary Hepton's Heaven', 1984), television and radio, including three verse plays for children. His other radio plays are 'Pursuit', 'Mr Lowry's Loves', 'Glorious John', 'When Twilight Falls' and 'Dreams of a Working Man', all produced for Radio 4 in Birmingham. His radio features include 'The Red Room' (about Charlotte BrontA"), 'Millstone Grit Revisited' and 'The Long Causeway', a series about crossing the Pennines. He has performed his work world-wide. He is a former Arts Council Fellow, and has held Writer in Residence positions at Bishop Grosseteste College, Lincoln, at Farnborough Library, Hampshire, and for the D. H. Lawrence Centenary Festival, Nottingham. Glyn Hughes is also a painter and has exhibited widely in the North of England.