Carys Shannon is originally from rural North Gower in Swansea and now works between Wales and Spain as a writer and facilitator.

Carys grew up in a tiny hamlet that looked out across the Lougher estuary. The library van came once a week and the butchers van every other, mostly the ice-cream van didn’t bother at all. Swansea was far away. There were wild ponies, the marsh, tides and mud. Seeing friends meant an hour’s walk. Getting to town felt impossible. This marsh landscape is the setting for her first novel, Truth Like Water, both a love letter to, and an exorcising of, a very specific landscape that parented her more than her own family.

Carys studied Drama at Aberystwyth University before starting out in arts marketing, she then became a theatre producer, working for over a decade with companies like National Theatre Wales, Sgript Cymru, Volcano Theatre Company and other socially engaged arts projects. In 2013, after going freelance, Carys wrote and performed I’m Listening – A Case for Empathy, a solo performance based on grief and active listening.

Later in 2013, in what she describes as, “a very late coming of age experience”, Carys moved to Spain for what was meant to be a year but turned into a new life entirely. One day she’d like to write about it. Since moving, she’s always worked between Wales and Spain.

In 2017, Carys graduated from the University of South Wales with an MPhil in Writing. She has had short stories published in anthologies by Honno Press and Parthian Books, as well as Mslexia Magazine. She was shortlisted for the 2021 Rhys Davies Short Story Award and the 2012 Terry Hetherington Award. Nonfiction publications include WomanKind magazine, YES Magazine and International House Journal.

Carys’ first novel, Truth Like Water, was awarded a Literature Wales development grant and has been longlisted for the Bath and Mslexia Novel Awards and shortlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award. In 2020 this novel won the Jericho Writers Festival of Writing Prize.

Carys now lives in the Spanish Pyrenees with her partner and rescue cat. When she’s not writing, she’s happiest outside, enjoying slow time in big nature, or helping out at the local animal shelter.