International Journal of Welsh Writing in English
The Association is responsible for producing a scholarly journal, the International Journal of Welsh Writing in English (IJWWE), published by the University of Wales Press in collaboration with leading digital Open Access provider the Open Library of Humanities (OLH). This is the only scholarly journal dedicated solely to the study of Welsh writing in English, in all its forms, from its earliest origins to the present day.
Established as an annual publication, the journal was called Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays from 1995 to 2007 (volumes 1-11). It was published by the New Welsh Review for all but the final volume of this period. The journal then became Almanac - A Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English: Critical Essays from 2008 to 2012 (volumes 12-16) when it was published by Parthian.
The journal took on its current title (and restarted its numbering) in 2013 when publication was taken over by the University of Wales Press. In collaboration with the OLH, it went fully digital Open Access from 2017 (volume 4). At this point it moved away from its once-yearly format to a continuous publication model, in which articles are made available online as soon as they are ready.
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Material published from 2017 onwards is available to read free online. For availability of print issues from 1995 to 2015, please see individual archive pages below.
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Editors and Editorial BoardClick here for details of the current editors and supporting Editorial Board.
Scope and SubmissionsClick here for full information about (a) the journal's scope and (b) length and format of submissions.
To submit an article to the journal, please use the OLH online submission system. As a result of the OLH's innovative funding system, there are no author-facing charges for publication in IJWWE. Inquiries and InformationFor all inquiries, please contact the Editors or the Reviews Editor via the journal's online query system.
For information about current activities and new articles, please follow the journal on Twitter. |
Cover images of print editions of the journal from 1995 to 2015.
Click to activate slideshow of cover images in chronological order. |
Origins
Tony Brown’s editorial from the inaugural issue, reproduced below, outlines the origins of the Yearbook and its aims when it was first established. The commitment to scholarship and the focus outlined here are as relevant to the Journal today as they were to the Yearbook when it began.
The publication of this inaugural issue of Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, the first academic journal to be devoted solely to the study of the English-language writing of Wales, is a major development in the field.
The seeds of the idea for this journal were sown, perhaps not insignificantly, far from Wales when several academics from the University of Wales attended an international conference on “The Literature of Region and Nation” in Luxembourg in 1990. The fact that a session at that conference was devoted to three papers on Welsh writing in English was itself something of a landmark. But those present were acutely reminded of how much more fully developed, in terms of resources, academic interest, publications and international reputation, was the study of the English-language literatures of Ireland and Scotland. We were aware that in Wales an increasing number of courses on Welsh writing in English were being made available at all levels from G.C.S.E. and A-level through to postgraduate study. But, in the light of the contact with colleagues from other countries, those present also realised how relatively small is the body of critical work even on some of Wales’s best English-language writers and at the same time how very limited were the opportunities for scholars and critics in Wales to publish the results of their research.
Wales’s existing literary journals have published much admirable critical work over the years. But these journals have other important roles to play, as publishers of new writing and reviewers of new work, and as commentators on the contemporary cultural scene in Wales and beyond. Thus, inevitably, the space available to serious literary scholarship is limited. Moreover, the pressures that arise from the need for these journals to appeal to as broad a readership as possible mean that there are considerable constraints on length, approach, subject-matter, discourse, etc. Hitherto, the scope for a scholar in Wales to publish an essay of substantial length, particularly if that essay considers its subject-matter in the context of contemporary critical or theoretical debate, has been very limited indeed. And it almost goes without saying that academic journals in England show little interest in Welsh writing. The Yearbook is designed to remedy this situation by providing a dedicated journal for publication of some of the excellent critical work that is being produced on the English-language literature of Wales.
The Yearbook is unambiguously and unashamedly an academic journal. However, it aims to be academic in the most creative sense: committed to maintaining the highest standards of criticism and scholarship while aiming also to make the material as accessible as possible to the non-specialist reader. As this inaugural volume demonstrates, the Yearbook will cover the whole chronological range of Welsh writing in English, though inevitably there will be emphasis on the writing produced in the twentieth century. The focus will be directly on literary work, not on historical topics or more general cultural issues. While the Yearbook’s primary concern is to be the study of Welsh writing in English, it will also provide an opportunity for the publication of critical work in English on Welsh-language authors or texts, in so far as connections are made between those authors or texts and writing in English.
Indeed, the Yearbook will be particularly interested in studies which relate the two literatures of Wales. In many ways, as more than one of the papers in the this issue indicates, the time is ripe for serious reconsideration of the exact nature of the relationship between Welsh-language and English-language writing in Wales; the Yearbook hopes to be much involved in this re-mapping of Wales’s literatures.
We believe that, in publishing original essays in criticism and the results of new scholarship in the field, the Yearbook will become a major resource for students and teachers, at all levels, involved in the study of Welsh writing in English; it is to that end, too, that we shall be publishing an annual bibliographical listing of recently-published critical material. Relatedly, we hope that the Yearbook will provide a focus for critical debate; while we will not normally publish letters, we will consider for publication short papers which respond to previously-published essays. We will also consider for publication shorter items, probably of a factual or scholarly nature, for publication in a “Notes” section. While there has been much that has been, to say the least, limiting, even damaging, going on in our education system in recent years, the study of Welsh writing in English has developed remarkably strongly, as new courses have been made available in schools and colleges, as conferences in Wales have become increasingly well-attended and as Welsh writing in English has become a part of the agenda of a number of major international academic conferences. As a result, the universities and colleges of Wales are developing a new generation of young teachers and critics in the field. We look forward to publishing some of the results of this heartening growth in interest.
It is also important that the study of Welsh writing in English should begin to locate itself in the critical and theoretical debates in which contemporary literary study is engaged, including recent developments in thinking about post-colonial literatures and issues of national/cultural identity. In all of this the Yearbook has a crucial role to play.
© Tony Brown, 1995; reproduced by kind permission of the author and New Welsh Review. Originally published as ‘Editorial’, Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, 1 (1995), pp. 3-4.
For contents lists, cover images, and details of editors for each issue, please consult our archive pages:
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International Journal of Welsh Writing in English, volume 3, 2015
International Journal of Welsh Writing in English, volume 2, 2014 International Journal of Welsh Writing in English, volume 1, 2013 Almanac - A Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English: Critical Essays, volume 16, 2012 Almanac - A Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English: Critical Essays, volume 15, 2010-11 Almanac - A Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English: Critical Essays, volume 14, 2009-10 Almanac - A Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English: Critical Essays, volume 13, 2008-9 Almanac - A Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English: Critical Essays, volume 12, 2007-8 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 11, 2006-7 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 10, 2005 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 9, 2004 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 8, 2003 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 7, 2001-2 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 6, 2000 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 5, 1999 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 4, 1998 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 3, 1997 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 2, 1996 Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, volume 1, 1995 |
Almanac, 2009-10
Yearbook, 2004
Yearbook, 1998
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The image at the top of this page features copies of the Yearbook/Almanac/Journal. It is taken from an original photograph © Matthew Jarvis.
