Jon Gower is a prize-winning author with over forty books to his name, in Welsh and in English. These include The Story of Wales, which accompanied the landmark BBC TV series and Y Storïwr, which won the Wales Book of the Year. His volume An Island Called Smith, about a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay was awarded the John Morgan Travel Writing Prize. Recent publications include studies of the radical film-maker Karl Francis and the visual artist John Selway as well as Gwalia Patagonia, being an account of the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, and Wales: At Water’s Edge about the country’s coastal path. His most recent publication was his much-lauded book on the Irish Sea as a locus of cultural exchange, The Turning Tide [HarperNorth, 2023]. Jon has also published five novels and five collections of short stories. He was an inaugural Hay Festival International Fellow and has been awarded an Arts Council of Wales Prize, a Creative Wales award and won both The National Eisteddfod Short Story Prize and the Allen Raine Short Story Competition. He is currently writing a narrative of change in British birds, bird reserves and bird culture, BIRDLAND, for HarperNorth. His journalism appears in the New Statesman, on BBC Radio 4 and 3, the Guardian, New Welsh Review and Nation.Cymru, where he is also Books Editor.