Sugar & Slate

Half Welsh and Half Afro-Caribbean

‘To be half Welsh and half Afro-Caribbean was always to be half of something but never quite anything whole at all.” Charlotte Williams

Charlotte Williams, author of Sugar and Slate, Winner of Wales Book of the Year discusses her award-winning book with publisher of the Library of Wales, Dr Richard Davies, in a Penfro meet the writer event.

‘It is Williams’s Welshness that makes the examination of her mixed-race identity distinctive, but it is the humour, candour and facility of her style that make it exceptional…an engaging and perceptive voice describing an engrossing and particular personal story.’ Gary Younge, The Guardian

“If I set out with the idea to document something of my searching as a second-generation black Briton, what began as an account of a journey became an account of a confrontation with myself and with the idea of Wales and Welshness.” Charlotte Williams

Sugar and Slate is a story of childhood and youth, of Welshness and otherness, of roots and rootlessness, of marriage, connection and disconnection, of going away and of going home.

Charlotte Williams discusses her journey as a writer and artist, the influence of growing up mixed-race in a Wales where she had few role models, the search for her identity and a sense of place.

Charlotte Williams OBE is a Welsh-Guyanese award-winning author, academic and cultural critic. Her writings span academic publications, memoir, short fiction, reviews, essays and commentaries. She has written over fourteen academic books, notably the edited collection ‘A Tolerant Nation? Ethnic Diversity in a devolved Wales (2003 & 2015) and including an edited text in the Rodopi postcolonial series on her father’s work ‘Denis Williams: A Life in Works’ (2010), She is a Professor Emeritus at Bangor University and holds Honorary fellowships at Wrexham Glyndŵr University, University of South Wales and Cardiff Metropolitan University. She is a member of the Learned Society of Wales. Her writings have taken her on travels world-wide but her heart and her home are always in Wales.

This will be a Penfro event.