Owen Sheers

Early life

Owen Sheers was born in Suva, Fiji in 1974, and brought up in Abergavenny, south Wales. He was educated at King Henry VIII School in Abergavenny, before going on to study at New College, Oxford and the University of East Anglia, where he completed an MA in Creative Writing. During his time at New College, Sheers captained the Oxford University Modern Pentathlon team.

Career

In 1999, Sheers received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. His first collection of poetry, The Blue Book, was published by Seren in 2000. A collection of poems about family, first love and farming life, it was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year and the Forward Prize for 'Best First Collection'. Following this first publication, Sheers worked on the light entertainment television show The Big Breakfast as a researcher. His debut prose work, The Dust Diaries, was published by Faber in 2004. A non-fiction narrative set in Zimbabwe, it won the Wales Book of the Year in 2005, and was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.

In 2004 Sheers was Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust and was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society’s 20 Next Generation Poets. Sheers' 2nd collection of poetry, Skirrid Hill (Seren, 2005) won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award. Unicorns, almost his one man play based on the life and poetry of the WWII poet Keith Douglas was developed by Old Vic, New Voices, and performed by Joseph Fiennes.

Sheers' first novel, Resistance, has been translated into ten languages and was short listed for the Writer's Guild of Great Britain Best Book Award 2008 and won a 2008 Hospital Club Creative Award. The novel imagines that the D-day landings have failed and Wales been occupied by the Nazis. Whilst working as a tiler in the South Wales valleys one summer, Sheers had heard about the Auxiliary Units-secret civilian networks that, in the event of an invasion, would have formed a British resistance, but the novel focuses not on fighting "but on the uneasy means of survival open to the women who are left behind". The film of the novel, which Sheers co-wrote, was released in autumn 2011 and starred Andrea Riseborough. Sheers insisted that the film be shot in and around the Black Mountains.

In 2007, Sheers collaborated with composer Rachel Portman on The Water Diviner’s Tale, an oratorio for children which was premièred at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms. In 2007/8 Sheers was a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.

In 2009, Sheers published the novella 'White Ravens', a contemporary response to the myth of Branwen Daughter of Llyr, written as part of Seren's series of New Stories from the Mabinogion. He published an anthology of British landscape poetry to accompany his TV series of the same title, A Poet's Guide to Britain.

Sheers has also written journalism and reportage for a variety of publications including Granta, The Guardian, Esquire, GQ, The Times and The Financial Times. He wrote a play for BBC Radio 4 about the World War II poet Alun Lewis: If I Should Go Away. In 2011, Sheers wrote the script and novelisation (The Gospel of Us) of The Passion for National Theatre Wales and WildWorks. The Gospel of Us has been re-published by Seren Press. Sheers worked with Michael Sheen co-creating the three-day passion play which unfolded over the Easter weekend of 2011 in Sheen's hometown of Port Talbot. "In Sheers's Neath-flavoured take on the Bible, The Last Supper became pork pies and beer at the Social Club (with music from the Manic Street Preachers), while the Garden of Gethsemane was a scrubby patch of grass on a council estate. " He participated in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books where he wrote a short play The Fair & Tender based upon the Book of Ezekiel in the King James Bible

In January 2012, Sheers wrote The Two Worlds of Charlie F, a play based on the experiences of wounded soldiers, many of whom also made up the cast of the production, directed by Stephen Rayne and performed at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The play has toured the UK and Canada and won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award at the Edinburgh Festival. In 2014 his site specific World War I play 'Mametz' was produced by National Theatre of Wales. His verse drama Pink Mist was first broadcast on Radio 4 and presents an elegy about camaraderie and loss in modern warfare as seen through the stories of serving soldiers in Afghanistan and their families. Pink Mist won the 2014 Welsh Book of the Year and was produced as a stage play by the Bristol Old Vic theatre in 2015, winning mentions as a top ten pick the year in The Guardian and The Observer. In April 2015 Owen's libretto for Mark Bowden's oratorio 'A Violence of Gifts' was premiered at St David's Hall, Cardiff. The oratorio was devised as a contemporary response to Hayden's Creation oratorio, and was informed by three days research at CERN.

In 2014 Owen presented a one-hour BBC documentary about the poetry of Dylan Thomas, for which he was shortlisted for a BAFTA Cymru for Best Presenter.

His novel I Saw A Man was published in 2015 in the UK, US and several countries across Europe. The French translation was shortlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger. The film rights for the novel have been bought by FilmFour.

His play, 'Pink Mist', was first staged at the Bristol Old Vic in 2015. It tells the story of three young Bristolians deployed to Afghanistan. It is their return home to the women in their lives that presents them with their bigger challenges as they all learn to cope with the physical and psychological after effects of war.

Owen is currently Professor of Creativity at Swansea University.

Rugby union

In December 2011, Owen Sheers became the first writer in residence at the Welsh Rugby Union. Sheers played rugby union, representing Gwent County at scrum half.

Actor & TV presenter

Sheers has played Wilfred Owen on stage and has presented arts programmes for BBC Wales.

In 2009, he wrote and presented the BBC 4 series about poetry and the British landscape, A Poet's Guide to Britain. He has also presented The Art of the Sea for BBC 4 and documentaries on the poets Keith Douglas and Dylan Thomas. He has presented several programmes for BBC Radio 3 and 4. In 2008 he presented two episodes of BBC Radio 4's Open Book programme.

In October 2016, his "film-poem", The Green Hollow, was broadcast by the BBC to commemorate fifty years since the Aberfan disaster of 1966.

Awards and honours