Fflur Dafydd

Fflur Dafydd (born 1 August 1978) is a Welsh novelist, screenwriter, singer-songwriter and musician. Though mainly publishing in Welsh, she also writes in English. She contributes regularly in Welsh to Radio Cymru.

Early life Dafydd is the daughter of Welsh poet Menna Elfyn and a cousin of BBC broadcaster Bethan Elfyn. She grew up in Llandysul, a Welsh-speaking community, and although she received the majority of her education in Welsh, she chose to study English in higher education. She graduated in English from Aberystwyth University. While she was there she first came to prominence as a student in 1999, by winning the Literature Medal at the Urdd National Eisteddfod at Lampeter. This success led to the publication of Y Gwir Am Gelwydd (The Truth About Lies), a collection of 12 poems and five short stories.

After graduating from Aberystwyth, she gained an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2000, followed by a PhD on the poetry of R. S. Thomas from Bangor University in 2001.

Writer Dafydd has written for stage, screen and radio, and her wide repertoire includes short fiction, journalism, lecturing, songwriting, screenwriting, poetry, novels, plays and films.

She was nominated for a D.M. Davies award at the Cardiff International Film Festival for her short film "Bathtime" (2002).

In 2005 her first novel Lliwiau Liw Nos (Colours by Night) was published and shortlisted for the Prose Medal. It was followed in 2006 by her second novel Atyniad (Attraction), which won the Prose Medal at the National Eisteddfod in Swansea.

In 2005 she was selected for the Scritture Giovani project for emerging European writers. She has also undertaken literary residencies in Helsinki (2006) and on Bardsey Island (2002).

In 2008 she published her first English-language novel, Twenty Thousand Saints, inspired by six weeks as a writer-in-residence on Bardsey in 2002. On her choice of language, she said, "It started out as a translation of a Welsh-language novel, and after about a year or so, I decided that it really wasn't working – so I decided to start from scratch with a completely different story." This work won for her the Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer Award.

In 2009 she won the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize for her novel Y Llyfrgell (The Library). In the same year, she took part in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. The novel was adapted by Dafydd herself into a 2016 film, directed by Euros Lyn. The film won a BAFTA Cymru award, and Dafydd was nominated for a BIFA award for debut screenwriter. She has also written around 50 hours of primetime drama for S4C and the BBC Iplayer. Her original shows "PARCH" and "YR AMGUEDDFA" were nominated for numerous awards at BAFTA Cymru, and were distributed internationally in Spain, Japan and the US, and her shows "35 awr" (35 hours) and "35 Diwrnod" (35 Days) also sold to Britbox in the US and Canada. As well as writing in Welsh for S4C she has also contributed episodes to Humans (China version) and Trigger Point (ITV Season 3.) Her first radio drama series for BBC Radio 4, Mothercover, was nominated for Best Audio Drama in the BBC Audio Drama awards 2026.

Her most recent novels - The Library Suicides (2022) and The House of Water (2025) are published by Hodder & Stoughton and The House of Water was longlisted for the Crime Association's Twisted Dagger Award 2026.