John Evans (writer)

John Evans (born 1960) is a Welsh writer, filmmaker, and environmental activist. He started his career as frontman for the punk band The Tax Exiles. The Tax Exiles were regulars at The Roxy Club, and other punk venues, in 1976–1978. In the early 1980s he embarked on a solo career, and was signed to the Situation 2/4AD record label, recording a single, "Sister Soul", under the name John Marlon.

Since the 1990s he has worked as a full-time writer and filmmaker, and is part of the New Wave of Welsh writing.

His books include Industria, G.B.H., The Acid Real, and a novel, Giants. Evans often writes about his native South Wales Valleys. John Evans has also written a number of non-fiction books, among them an economic, social, and cultural examination of post-industrial South Wales, How Real Is My Valley? – Postmodernism & the South Wales Valleys, and the natural history works, The Red Kite in Wales, and Goshawk.

His films include The Acid Real, and Goshawk, which are based on two of his books with the same title.

John Evans is also a prominent campaigner and activist often at the forefront of campaigns on cultural, environmental, and social issues. In 1998, he was nominated for, and won, a Whitbread Award "in recognition of outstanding service to the community. And, in In 2010, faced with the Welsh Assembly Government's controversial plan to cull thousands of badgers in Wales in an attempt to stop the spread of bovine TB, he created Save The Badger, an umbrella organisation which included the RSPCA, Badger Trust, and Welsh Wildlife Trust among its ranks. He also became spokesman for the organisation and, alongside his long-term partner Nicola Dodd and Queen's guitarist Brian May, he was at the forefront of the high-profile campaign which resulted in the badger cull being stopped in Wales. In 2013 he founded Raptor Watch, an organisation to conserve and protect birds of prey in South Wales.