Professor M. Wynn Thomas
'Soul-searches: Marilynne
Robinson's Gilead and Emyr
Humphreys's Outside the House of Baal.' (The Saunders Lewis Memorial Lecture)
Abstract: Marilynne
Robinson is one of the most eminent novelists of contemporary America, and was
honoured by President Obama with an invitation during his term in office to
conduct a public conversation with him at the White House. Her key fiction has
been firmly underpinned by her strong moral principles and religious faith, and
in this respect it invites comparison with the resonant fiction of Emyr
Humphreys.
Biography: M. Wynn Thomas FBA FLSW OBE is Professor of English and holder of the Emyr Humphreys Chair of Welsh Writing in English at Swansea University. He is the author of over twenty books and his most recent book is a new study of Emyr Humphreys (2018). The record of his thirty-year close friendship with Emyr Humphreys will be preserved in the Emyr Humphreys Archive at Swansea University being formally launched at this symposium.
Dr Michelle Deininger
Emyr
Humphreys’ Short Fictions: Landscapes, Communities, Contexts
Abstract: Emyr Humpreys’ short
fictions span his entire career, from Natives (1968) to The Woman at
the Window (2009). As Linden Peach notes in The Fiction of Emyr
Humphreys (2011), stories in Natives explore ‘changes which are
taking place at a local, community level [that] are analogous to larger
dilemmas within Wales in the middle of the twentieth century’. This paper will
examine the ways in which communities, and the landscapes they reside in, are
constructed in Humphreys’ fictions, exploring changes and continuities between
the earlier stories and those published more recently. It will pay particular
attention to the way industrial landscapes are depicted, from motorway link
roads to ‘desolate docklands’ and how these kinds of images speak to wider
environmental concerns. Finally, this paper will make connections with other
Welsh short story writers who critique industrialisation and its impact on
communities and environments, such as Elizabeth Baines, contextualising
Humpreys’ work in a wider tradition of short story writing and its potential
for political and cultural change.
Biography: Dr
Michelle Deininger is Co-ordinating Lecturer in Humanities in the division of
Continuing and Professional Education at Cardiff University. She manages the
broader adult education humanities provision as well as co-ordinating several
open access Pathways to a Degree programmes in English, Creative Writing,
Philosophy and Media. She is currently co-writing a book with Dr Claire
Flay-Petty (Bridgend College) entitled Scholarship and Sisterhood: Women,
Writing and Higher Education for UWP.
Professor Daniel G Williams
What’s Wrong with Ancestor Worship? Emyr
Humphreys in the 1970s
Abstract: The 1970s in Wales witnessed
successful strikes by miners in 1972 and 1974, and considerable vitality in
Welsh language culture as manifested in politics and in popular music. Yet much
of the decade’s writing dwells on themes of loss, despair and melancholia. The
fact that a remarkably vibrant decade in politics, sport and culture gives rise
to a literature of nostalgia, loss and grief needs explaining. Was the debacle
of the 1979 referendum foreseen in the decade’s novels? This is a question that
I will try to address with reference to Emyr Humphreys’ writings.
Biography: Daniel G. Williams is Professor of
English and Director of the Richard Burton Centre for the Study of Wales at
Swansea University. His latest book is Wales
Unchained: Literature. Politics and Identity in the American Century
(2015).
Dr Elinor Shepley
‘There was always an
unspecified goal. It has turned out to be old age’: Ageing in Emyr Humphreys’s
novels and short stories
Abstract: Emyr Humphreys has attended to experiences of
and attitudes towards ageing in his writing for much of his literary career.
One might read the proliferation of older characters to be found in Humphreys’s
oeuvre as reflecting the demographic
shifts at play in our society since the early twentieth century. Critics have
also argued that literary texts are particularly appropriate for rendering the
complexities of aged experience and Humphreys’s ability to reveal human
frailties and failings with a combination of cutting insight, humour and
benevolence is certainly suited to exploring the intricacies of growing older.
Studies of novels and short stories about ageing often reveal a concern with
the trajectories of older protagonists’ lives. Traditional conceptions of later
life characterised by degeneration and loss have been designated ‘decline
narratives’ and are usually viewed as problematic due to their involvement in
the propagation of ageist attitudes and limiting expectations of later life.
Critics have also explored intersections between age and gender and the concept
of ‘late style’ – described by Edward Said as ‘a sort of deliberately
unproductive productiveness’ – has been applied to the late works of a number
of creative writers. This paper will consider a selection of Humphreys’s
fictional works with reference to recent critical perspectives on age and ageing
in literature.
Biography: Elinor Shepley
recently completed a PhD at Cardiff University. Her thesis examines the
representation of ageing in modern and contemporary Welsh fiction in English.
Elinor wrote her Masters dissertation on old age in Emyr Humphreys’s fiction, a
section of which was published in Almanac: The Yearbook of Welsh Writing in
English. She currently works for the Institute of Welsh Affairs.
Dr Andy Webb
Twenty-First Century Humphreys
Abstract: This
paper explores Humphreys most recent publications and the representation of
Wales in Europe.
Biography: Andy Webb is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Bangor
University and the author of Edward Thomas and World Literary Studies 
Dr Tristan Hughes
In conversation
Abstract: Hughes explores the contours of his own and Emyr Humphreys' writing in conversation with Kirsti Bohata.
Biography: Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan in northern Ontario and
brought up on the Welsh island of Anglesey. He is the author of four
novels, Send My Cold Bones Home, Revenant, Eye Lake and Hummingbird
- which won the Edward Stanford Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place and the
Wales Book of the Year People's Choice Prize - as well as a collection of
linked short stories, The Tower. His short fiction has appeared in
various journals, including Ploughshares, The Southern Review,
and New Welsh Review. He is a winner of the Rhys Davies short
story prize and the recipient of an O. Henry Award. He currently teaches
creative writing at Cardiff University.
