Sheers, Owen

(1974- )

   Born in Fiji, he was brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales, and educated at King Henry VIII comprehensive, Abergavenny, and New College, Oxford. He was the winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the 1999 Vogue Young Writer's Award. His first collection of poetry, the Blue Book (Seren, 2000) was short-listed for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward Prize Best First Collection 2001. His second collection of poetry, Skirrid Hill, was published by Seren in 2005. The Dust Diaries (Faber 2004), a travel memoir set in Zimbabwe, was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and won Welsh Book of the Year 2005. He has also written for radio, TV and newspapers and has toured extensively, most recently in New York, Croatia and Hungary. In 2004 he was writer in residence at the Wordsworth Trust and was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society's 20 "Next Generation" poets.

   Sources: Biography of Owen Sheers: The Blue Book (http://www.owensheers.co.uk/back.htm). Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).