Gwyneth Lewis’ acclaimed memoir Nightshade Mother nominated for Sky Arts Award

Gwyneth Lewis, the inaugural National Poet of Wales, and one of the UK’s leading poets, has been nominated for a Sky Arts Award in Literature for her memoir, Nightshade Mother, published by Calon in 2024.

Gwyneth has been nominated in the literature category alongside Alan Hollinghurst and Sally Rooney.  The winner will be announced at a live ceremony at the Roundhouse, London, on September 16.

In the book, which won the Wales Non-fiction Book of the Year and has been praised by Rowan Williams, Tom Bullough, Adam Phillips and many more, she wrote of the pain she suffered at the hands of her controlling, coercive mother.  It is a book that Gwyneth had been preparing to write all her life, in diaries which she had kept since childhood. In these journals, she interrogated the mother/daughter relationship, in great pain but determined to find a way through.

Nightshade Mother is a book about the power of art, about language, and about homecoming, after a lifetime of exile from herself. Profoundly moving, questing and loving in its approach, Nightshade Mother is a book for anyone who has suffered at the hands of a coercive parent.

“The ride of a lifetime”

Gwyneth Lewis shared: “I never dreamt as I was writing Nightshade Mother –  the hardest book I’ve ever finished – that it would be included in such starry company.

“I’m so grateful to the Sky Arts Awards and my publisher Calon for making this the ride of a lifetime.”

Natalie Williams, director of the University of Wales press, said: “We are delighted that Nightshade Mother has been so deservedly acknowledged by the Sky Arts Awards, alongside other such esteemed authors.

“Calon was honoured to be chosen by Gwyneth to publish her memoir, understanding how important this book is, and how brave she was to write it with such honesty and depth.

“We have already seen how Gwyneth’s story has resonated with so many readers, and we are indebted to her for trusting us with it. We are so grateful to both Gwyneth and the Sky Arts Awards for this very proud moment for Calon.”

Acclaim

Gwyneth Lewis is one of the UK’s most acclaimed writers, and was brought up Welsh-speaking in Cardiff.

She studied English and spent time in America. She was Wales’s first National Poet and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre.

Her other non-fiction books are Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and  Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage.

Her tenth book of poetry, First Rain in Paradise, is forthcoming in March 2025. Gwyneth was awarded an MBE in 2023 for services to literature and mental health.

The Sky Arts Awards are one-of-a-kind, world class event, rewarding and celebrating the best of British arts and culture.  Awards categories include: Classical Music, Comedy, Dance, Film, Literature, Poetry, Opera, Popular Music, Television, Theatre, Visual Art and Lifetime Achievement.

Some notable Sky Arts Awards winners from 2024 include Melvyn Bragg (Lifetime Achievement), Fern Brady (Comedy), How to Have Sex (Film), Momtaza Mehri’s Bad Diaspora Poems (Poetry), Mr Bates vs The Post Office (Television) and Ryan Calais Cameron (Theatre). You can read the full list of Sky Arts Awards 2024 winners here.

Reviewing the book for Nation Cymru, Clare E Potter wrote: “Nightshade Mother is written with eloquence and mettle. In these pages we are let into the process of the writing through which Gwyneth Lewis exorcises the myriad ‘malevolent ghosts’ that almost consumed her.

“By the end of it, she inhabits all her spaces, her mother relegated to a visitor, ‘not invited to stay.’ And though she says this is no ‘confessional catharsis,’ the reader is heartened by the unwavering voice at the end, the fearless, formidable woman who like Mwnci shows us how crucial it is to speak our truth, and to be heard.”

Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling by Gwyneth Lewis is published by Calon. It is available from all good bookshops.

Read Nation.Cymru’s review of Nightshade Mother here.