I’ve been working with Alys for 3 years now! Here is a little throwback to an interview from Beyond The Withered Roots;
What drew you to writing your piece?
I remember growing up and hearing the Mabinogi tales. When I was a child, I didn’t notice the roles that many of the women played or even the complete absence of women from the stories. Women were often treated as prizes for these heroic men who lived these interesting lives. It was only when I grew up and noticed this difference that I wanted to address it and do a modern retelling where these women’s lives are centred and retold through a different, although not always historically accurate, lens.
Describe your writing process.
Organised chaos! If I get an idea, I tend to go full steam ahead and start writing down a rough plan of bullet points or whatever fragments that are begging to be written. After doing a ‘brain dump’, I try and put a bit of order to my documents and get writing. If there’s a first draft, I can then edit and make it look like I knew what I was doing all along (which I definitely didn’t…)!
Why do you write? Why do you want to be an author?
I write because it’s my way of making sense of the world. As cliché as it sounds, I’ve always wanted to be an author since I was young and used to write chapters and chapters of stories in Pukka notepads. I also write because I feel as though it’s important for young queer people to see themselves represented in literature, even though we live in a predominantly heteronormative society.
What kind of books do you read and how does that influence your writing?
I tend to read a lot of YA (Young Adult) fiction and all kinds of poetry. I’ve found that I read a lot of work written by women and queer writers, whether that be fiction or nonfiction. I think that these books and poetry have influenced the way that I write my own stories as a queer woman. Writers like Audre Lorde, Shani Mootoo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have been like beacons to me in my writing journey.
What do you eat or drink whilst you write?
Tea! Endless cups of tea, biscuits & maybe even a Welsh cake ????
What is your preferred genre to write in?
Dystopian and fantasy (I can’t pick!). I love to write in worlds that are very different to our own.
What comes first, the plot idea or character idea?
Plot idea!
Are you working on anything at the moment, or do you have any plans or ideas for future projects?
I’m currently working on a collection of ecopoetry!
Which is your favourite moment from the book as a whole (doesn’t have to be from your own work)?
It has to be the ending of ‘If I Die Before I Wake’. I won’t give any spoilers, but all I’ll say is that I was dying to know what happened next.
Would you like to write more with the characters from your piece?
I would love to! But I also feel as though I’ve contained a lot in Arianrhod’s story and the ending felt like a real ending.
Who is your author inspiration?
Bernadine Evaristo and Rita Mae Brown, without a doubt. As for poets, it’ll have to be Menna Elfyn and Mererid Hopwood.
