Pamela Petro

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Pamela Petro is an author, artist, and educator.^[1] Her books, including Travels in an Old Tongue (1996), Sitting up with the Dead (2001, UK, 2002, 2017 US), The Slow Breath of Stone (2005), and The Long Field (2021, UK 2023, US) investigate ideas of place, home, longing, and belonging, using people and places to illuminate and reveal one another. She is interested in the Welsh concept of hiraeth, an intractable longing for someone or something — a home, a culture, a language, or younger self — that’s been left behind or taken away, or has only ever existed in the imagination. Petro’s photography-based visual art explores similar themes in both environmental and word-image installations.

Petro teaches creative nonfiction and graphic novel and comics on Lesley University's MFA in Creative Writing Program and at Smith College, and is co-Director of the Dylan Thomas Summer School in Creative Writing at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

The Long Field (2021, UK) published by Little Toller, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2022.