Deborah Kay Davies was born in Pontypool and has lived most of her life in the Eastern Valley of 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 Mslexia, Planet and New Welsh Review and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She is a three-time winner in the Rhys Davies competition. Her poetry has been published in many journals, including Agenda, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales and Planet. She has given readings at the AWP Conference in Baltimore, USA, and at venues throughout the UK, including Chapter Cardiff, the Hay Festival and the Dulwich Poetry Festival, London.

Deborah has an MA in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University. She has taught Creative Writing at Cardiff University and the University of Glamorgan. She was awarded an Arts Council of Wales New Writer’s Bursary in 1994, a Writer’s Bursary in 1999 and an Academi Writer’s Bursary in 2005.

Gold.fm, which broadcasts across the UK, featured Deborah Kay Davies in their news reports at 9, 10, 11am and midday Sunday 26 October.

To listen to an example of the news-report on the south Wales broadcast including the Deborah Kay Davies article go to www.mediafire.com and click to dowload.

To listen to the entire transcript of Deborah's interview on Arty Smarty click on the link on the Parthian homepage or visit arty-smarty.blogspot.com

This is no ordinary random collection of short stories. Here each brief narrative stands on its own yet forms part of a continuous and powerful sequence.

Set in the eastern valleys of south Wales from 1970 to the present day, it relates the history of Grace and Tamar, their volatile childhood, disruptive coming-of-age and dubious maturity. The book is part novel, part fantasy, part social history. More than anything it tells dark, universal tales about how utterly strange it is to learn to be human.

Readers who know Deborah Kay Davies’s poetry may be better prepared than most for the shock of her debut collection of stories, Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful, by turns moving, hilarious and terrifying, and often all three at once.

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Deborah Kay Davies has achieved something rare: a collection of short stories wherein each story is complete in its own right (many were competition winners, or radio broadcasts) but which also work together as a novella-length sequence. The connecting thread is the two sisters Grace and Tamar: this is a study of a lifelong sibling rivalry, or rather, sister rivalry, since though they do have a brother he is not important enough even to merit a name. In fact, the male characters are shadowy and undeveloped in all these stories.
Grotesque and violent incidents abound: Tamar is nearly killed as a toddler when Grace pushes her out of a tree; later in life, Tamar nearly drowns Grace in retaliation for the latter's sexual exhibitionism on the beach. Tamar likes to put baby snails up her nose; one disappears and never comes back. One story features sexual intercourse with a basset hound. Sometimes, indeed, the reader is led to wonder whether the events "really" happened or whether they are fantasies. Davies's first book was a volume of poetry and her gift for imagery is is evident here: eating a scallop is described as "like eating a virgin mermaid's buttock".
Independent on Sunday
Reviewed by Brandon Robshaw
Sunday, 16 November 2008