Suppoted by
Monmouth Chamber of Commerce
For the definitive guide to all that is happening in Monmouth go to www.monmouthevents.co.uk |
Monmouth Town Council
supports the Monmouth Women's Festival
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| About the speakers |
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Deborah Kay Davies
Poet and author Deborah was born in Pontypool in South Wales. Her first collection of poetry, Things You Think I Don't Know, was published by Parthian in 2006. Her stories have been published in various anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University, where she now teaches creative writing.
Her award-winning book of short stories, Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful, is set in the eastern valleys of South Wales from 1970 to the present.
It tells the story of two sisters, Grace and Tamar, their volatile childhood, disruptive coming of age and dubious maturity.
By turns moving, hilarious and
terrifying and
often all three at once, it is an unusual
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collection in that each story is complete in its own right, but also forms part of a continuous and powerful sequence.
Part fantasy, part social history, these are dark, universal tales about how utterly strange it is to learn to be human.
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Kirsty Williams AM
Kirsty is Welsh Assembly Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, and became leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Welsh Assembly Government in 2008. She is also Welsh Liberal Democrat Shadow Minister for Finance and Public Service Delivery and for Children and Young People. She speaks regularly in the Assembly on behalf of her constituency on issues ranging from community hospitals to better housing, devolution to a sustainable future.
Kirsty was born in 1971 in Taunton, Somerset, to Welsh parents. When she was three years old, the family returned to the village of Bynea in Carmarthenshire where she grew up. |
She went on to study for a B.A. Hons in American Studies at Manchester University and The University of Missouri. She combines her political responsibilities with bringing up three daughters, and lives with her husband on the family farm near Brecon.
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Jung Chang
Jung Chang’s book Wild Swans describes the lives of three generations of Chinese women, from her grandmother to herself, shedding light on life in 20th century China along the way. It has been called by the Asian Wall Street Journal the ‘most read book about China’. She went on to write a critical biography of Mao Zedong, published in 2005, with her husband, British Historian Jon Halliday. Among the many awards she has won are the UK Writers’ Guild Best Non-Fiction (1992) and Book of the Year UK (1993).Born in Sichuan Province, China in 1952, where her parents were both Communist Party officials, Jung Chang joined the Red Guard as a teenager.
During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) she worked as a peasant, a ‘barefoot’ doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China in 1978 to study on a Government scholarship in Britain.
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Jung Chang has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Buckingham, York and Warwick, the Open University, UK, and Bowdoin College, USA., and taught for some time at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, before retiring in the 1990s to concentrate on her writing. She has travelled the world to talk about the Cultural Revolution.
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NOTICE
Due to ill-health, Lady Park will not be able to speak at the event on March 14th. Her place will be taken by Mady Gerrard, New York dress designer, teenage survivor of Nazi concentration camp, emigrant from Eastern Europe to Cardiff and then to North America.
Tickets for Lady Park will be valid for Mady Gerrard; or refunds available from the Nelson Museum, Monmouth.
Mady Gerrard’s life has been one of challenges and survival. As a teenager she survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. As a young woman she fled from Hungary during the Russian invasion in 1956, to be eventually settled by the United Nations in Cardiff. There she met the challenge of supporting herself by developing the skills taught her by her aunt and mother; and she opened a boutique in Cardiff selling knitted clothing which she had designed herself. In 1960 she emigrated to North America, and became a successful designer, clothing some of the rich and famous in New York.
She returned to Wales 20 years ago, and has continued to meet the challenge of work, designing and making beautiful garments. There will be samples of her work on display at her talk.
She published her autobiography Full Circle in 2007
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Baroness Park of Monmouth
With thirty years of diplomatic service to her credit, including spells in Moscow, Leopoldville, Lusaka, Hanoi and Ulan Bator, Daphne Park - the Rt. Hon. Baroness Park of Monmouth CMG OBE - was also working for the Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6. She was, the Telegraph reported in 2003, “the true face of British Intelligence for the second half of the 20th century. As one of MI6's most senior controllers for more than 30 years, she ran agents in Moscow during the Cold War, infiltrated Hanoi during the Vietnam conflict and smuggled men out of the Congo, post-independence, in the boot of her car.”
Born in 1921, the Baroness was also Principal of Somerville College, Oxford and a Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford in the 1980s, as well as holding roles on the Board of the British Library, as a Governor of theBBC and as Chairman of the Legal Aid Advisory Committee to the Lord Chancellor.
She was created a life peer in 1990, and has spoken in the House of Lords on defence, foreign affairs and education, and “retains an interest in, and admiration for, the young”.
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Jo Salter
As a combat ready pilot with 617 Squadron, the Dambusters, Jo experienced operational tours of duty and took part in large international NATO exercises around the world. She worked in intelligence and became a fast jet instructor. She went on to work in e-commerce experience and management consultancy in both the public and private sector, taking an MBA, Associate Lectureship with the Open University Business School. On her weekends, she flies air cadets a s a volunteer pilot for the RAF.
Jo now uses her boundless energy, never-failing humour, compassion and skills to facilitate workshops, deliver seminars, conduct high performance coaching sessions and enable individuals and organisations to solve problems.
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She appears regularly in the media and her book, Energize, was published by Hamlyn in 2009.
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Jill Evans
Jill was a councillor for seven years before becoming Chair of Plaid Cymru and then was elected as the joint first MEP in Plaid Cymru's history.
She is a member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and the Delegation for relations with Iraq and also deputises on the Agriculture Committee.
She is Vice President of Plaid Cymru, party spokesperson for European and International issues and chair of CND Cymru. |
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