Judges

For The Dylan Thomas Prize 2006

Andrew Davies - TV Writer, Chair of Judging Panel

Andrew Davies has been writing for the screen since 1965. His TV originals include A Very Peculiar Practice, Getting Hurt, A Few Short Journeys of the Heart, Filipina Dreamgirls, The Chatterley Affair and the sitcom Game On (with Bernadette Davis.) He has adapted Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Moll Flanders, Emma, Mother Love, House of Cards (for which he won an Emmy award,) Vanity Fair,Wives and Daughters and Take a Girl Like You for TV. Also Othello,The Way We Live Now, Daniel Deronda, Dr Zhivago, Tipping The Velvet, Boudica (The Warrior Queen) He Knew He Was Right, Bleak House, and The Line of Beauty. In production or preparation are Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Fanny Hill.

He has won six BAFTA awards, most recently in 2006 for Bleak House, and he was also awarded a BAFTA Fellowship in 2002. He has big-screen credits for Circle of Friends, Bridget Jones's Diary,The Tailor of Panama, and Bridget Jones:The Edge of Reason. His (many) unmade films include Rossini, Rossini for Robert Altman and The Count of Monte Cristo for Roman Polanski.

Andrew Davies has also written children's books (anyone remember Marmalade Atkins or Conrad's War?) stage plays (ROSE and PRIN, both of which played in the West End and Broadway) two adult novels (Getting Hurt and B.Monkey) and a book of short stories, Dirty Faxes.

He has taught in schools, at Coventry College of Education, and at Warwick University. He holds honorary doctorates from Cardiff, Coventry, De Montfort, Warwick and the Open University.

Kurt Heinzelman - Professor of English

Kurt Heinzelman is Professor of English at the University of Texas and former Executive Curator and Pforzheimer Senior Fellow at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. He is also a resident faculty member of the James A. Michener Center for Writers. He has been a Fulbright Fellow (United Kingdom), a Charles A. Dana Fellow, a Danforth Foundation Fellow, and a Fellow of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. He is also a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. He has published articles, poems and translations in an array of journals both here and abroad. His books of poetry are The Halfway Tree and Black Butterflies. His other books include The Economics of the Imagination, Make It New: The Rise of Modernism, and The Covarrubias Circle. Founding co-editor of The Poetry Miscellany, he is currently Advisory Editor for the Bat City Review.

Simon Kelner - Editor In Chief The Independent

Simon was appointed Editor of The Independent in May 1998 after a distinguished period as Editor of the Mail on Sunday's 'Night and Day' magazine. Simon has received considerable acclaim for his ground-breaking transformation of The Independent into a 'compact' format and the introduction of unique, innovative, single issue front pages. The compact format has been copied by 55 newspapers worldwide and Simon has won many awards including 'Editor of the Year' at the What the Papers Say Awards in 1999 and 2003, and 'Newspaper of the Year' at the British Press Awards in 2004.

Menna Elfyn - Poet & Playwright

Menna writes with passion of the Welsh language and identity. She has published eight volumes of poetry with Gomer Press and, more recently, with Bloodaxe Books. These contain facing-text English-language translations by a variety of hands including Joseph Clancy, Gillian Clarke,Tony Conran, Nigel Jenkins and Elin ap Hywel. With John Rowlands, she also co-edited the Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry in Translation(2003). In 2003, she was shortlisted for the prestigious Evelyn Encelot European prize for women poets.

Peter Stead - Cultural Historian

Peter's books include, Film and the Working Class:The Feature Film in Britain and America (1989), Acting Wales (2002) and critical studies of Richard Burton (1991) and Dennis Potter (1993). He has written many articles on Labour History and on aspects of Popular Culture. For the University of Wales Press he has edited and contributed to four volumes of essays on rugby, football and music.He has served on the Board of Sgrin, the Welsh Media Agency and chaired its Film Production Committee. He is an active member of the Institute of Welsh Affairs and broadcasts regularly on the BBC.

Paul Watkins - Novelist

Born 1964, Paul is the son of Welsh parents. His family have lived in the west of Wales as far back as records have been kept and his father competed for Wales in the Commonwealth Games. He was educated at the Dragon School, Eton and Yale and held a Master's Fellowship at the University of Syracuse Writing Program. He is the author of twelve books, both fiction and non-fiction, including Stand Before your God, The Story of My Disappearance, The Forger and The Fellowship of Ghosts.

His books have been translated into eight languages and one of his novels, Calm at Sunset, was turned into a film. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize; awarded the Encore Prize for Best Second Novel; received the Royal Society of Literature Award for Best Historical Fiction and is currently a finalist for Best Travel Book at the Banff Literary Festival. He was also awarded the Hopkyn's Medal by the Saint David's Society of New York. He is a regular reviewer for the London Times and is writer-in-residence at the Peddie School in Princeton, New Jersey.