Bronwen Griffiths
Bronwen Griffiths is the author of two novels, A Bird in the House (2014) and Here Casts No Shadow (2018), plus two collections of flash fiction, Not Here, Not Us – Stories of Syria (2016) and Listen with Mother (2019). Her work has been shortlisted and longlisted for a number of prizes, including the Bath Novella-in-Flash award and the WoW! short fiction competition. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Sussex, and lives in East Sussex.
Q: If you could travel back in time, which of the great writers would you like to meet and why?
A: I’d like to meet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and ask him how he managed to both write and illustrate such an extraordinary, magical book.
Q: What is the least interesting part of writing for you?
A: I’m not sure I have a ‘least interesting’ part, but there are times when the writing flags, when I’ve spent too much time on a project and it has a terrible saggy feeling to it – that’s when I need to go out of the house and do something different, like swimming, walking or gardening.
Q: What superpower would you like to have and why?
A: Like most people I’d love to be able to fly and see the world from a bird’s viewpoint. Plus it would be carbon-neutral, so I could fly without guilt or adding to my carbon footprint.
Q: Who is your personal inspiration?
A: I don’t have a single ‘who’. So many people inspire me – writers, social activists, human rights campaigners. I really admire the women from Families for Freedom who campaign for the release of detainees from Assad’s prisons in Syria – though often the news is terrible and their loved ones have been killed. The way they continue to campaign through such grief and injustice is incredible to me.
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