Niall Griffiths

Niall Griffiths (born 1966) is an English author of novels and short stories, set predominantly in Wales. His works include the novels Grits and Sheepshagger, travel guides to Aberystwyth and Liverpool, and a book of poetry. He has won the Wales Book of the Year award twice, for Stump in 2004 and Broken Ghost in 2020.

Life Griffiths was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, but had a long family link to Welsh roots in West Wales. As a nine-year-old boy Griffiths found a second-hand copy of a novel by Rhondda writer Ron Berry in a junk shop. Berry, who wrote from the viewpoint of the industrial working class, but in a more earthy and centred style than many of his more celebrated peers, "spoke" to Griffiths who was captured by the language and style of the writing. In future years Griffiths continued to cite Berry as a major influence, along with writers Alexander Trocchi and Hubert Selby Jr. In 1976 his family emigrated to Australia, but returned three years later after his mother became homesick.

Griffiths found himself in trouble with the law during his adolescence, and at the age of 15 he was sent on an Outward Bound course in Snowdonia in North Wales. Griffith spent several years taking on a number of short term menial jobs before he was accepted into Aberystwyth University to study for a PhD in post-war poetry, but failed to complete the course. He has "a fierce loyalty" to the city of his birth, but has lived "most of his life near Aberystwyth". A story of addicts and drifters set in Aberystwyth, it explores "life on the disadvantaged and desperate peripheries of society" and quickly drew comparisons with Irvine Welsh. In 2002 he published Kelly + Victor, which explores the passionate sexual relationship between two clubbers which spirals towards destruction. The book was made into a film in 2012, directed by his friend Kieran Evans.

Griffith's 2003 novel, Stump, is narrated by a one-armed Liverpudlian alcoholic trying to make a fresh start in Aberystwyth. Reviewers noted its "mesmerising command of idiom" and described it as "his most economic and effective piece of fiction". The Guardian said that it provides "one of the great depictions of alcoholism", and called Griffiths "an epic and, at moments, visionary writer". The novel won two national awards, the Welsh Books Council Book of the Year and the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award.

After two more novels, Wreckage and Runt, he wrote two travel guides, Real Aberystwyth, about his new home, and Real Liverpool, both edited by Peter Finch. In 2009 he wrote Ten Pound Pom, travelling back to Australia for the first time as an adult, comparing his memories spent in the country as a child with his new found experiences. In 2020, this novel won the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award and gave Griffiths his second Wales Book of the Year award.