Jon Gower

Jon Gower grew up in Llanelli. A former BBC Wales arts and media correspondent, he was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, where he read English. He is a documentary maker for television and radio with a third of a century's credits to his name. Recent documentaries cover subjects such as the secret life as a poet of Hollywood actor Robert Mitchum (based on the book 'Oh Dad!' by Lloyd Robson) and the Summer of Love in San Francisco.

Jon has eleven books to his name, in both Welsh and English. They include 'An Island Called Smith,' about a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay, which gained him the John Morgan travel writing prize, and 'Uncharted', a novel described by Jan Morris as 'unflagging and unfailingly inventive.' In 2009 he was awarded a major Creative Wales award to explore the Welsh settlement in Patagonia.

Along with novelist Tiffany Murray, Jon is currently a Hay Festival International Fellow, and his next books will be a novel called 'Y Storiwr', due out in July 2011 and 'The Story of Wales' which will accompany a landmark BBC series, due to be broadcast early in 2012. His second volume of short stories 'Too Cold for Snow' will appear in May 2012 as will a joint publication about the Welsh coastline where his text complements beautiful photography by Jeremy Moore.

In what little spare time he has Jon develops and performs theatre pieces with actor Gerald Tyler and trumpeter Tomos Williams, and reads, both to his children and occasionally by himself!

Jon lives in Cardiff with his wife Sarah and two book-loving daughters Elena and Onwy.