James Friel's most recent novel, The Higher Realm, won the 2006 Ilura Press Fiction Quest, and will appear in 2007. His other novels include Left of North, Taking the Veil and Careless Talk.
He has won a Betty Trask Prize, an Authors’ Foundation Award, a Welsh Arts Council Bursary, a storySouth Million Writers Award, and was nominated for the Mail on Sunday/ John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Fiction Prize.
His work has appeared in Blithe House Quarterly, Etchings, Pretext, Pool 1&2, Boomerang, The Writers' Workbook, Time Out, Harpers & Queen, Fable, The Universe, In the Red and Cercles, as well as on BBC Radio 3 and 4's Front Row and Kaleidoscope.
His radio adaptations include The Remains of the Day for the BBC 4; David Hare’s film, Saigon: Year of the Cat; Balzac’s Cousin Bette, as well as Villette, As I Lay Dying, Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat and Orhan Pamuk’s Snow for BBC Radio 3, and A Pale View of Hills for BBC Radio 4.
He is Programme Leader for the MA in Writing at the Centre for Writing, Liverpool John Moores University, and Visiting Writer at L'Universite de Rouen, and at L'Universite de Francois Rabelais in Tours.
He tutors regularly for both the Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd, where he will be holding a Writers' Retreat from August 20-25, with the poet, Clare Shaw as guest reader. http://www.tynewydd.org/english/courses/residenceJF.html