Biography
Rachel Trezise was born in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales, in 1978. At 16, she produced and edited a local music fanzine, Smack Rupunzel, and went on to study journalism and English at Glamorgan University, graduating in 2000.
Her first book, In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl, was published in the same year, and is an autobiographical novel about growing up in the valleys of South Wales. It led to Rachel being selected for the Orange Futures list - a list of 21 young female authors for the 21st century. She went on to become a freelance journalist, writing features on music and the arts for Big Issue Cymru and the New Welsh Review. Her essay on Neale Howells was published in Sideways Glances, and further fiction has appeared in many Welsh anthologies.
Fresh Apples (2005), her second book, is a collection of 11 short stories celebrating youth, and won the inaugural EDS Dylan Thomas Prize. Her third book, Dial M for Merthyr (2007) is a music documentary and travelogue about Midasuno, a rock band of young people from Merthyr, with whom she toured in summer 2005, on their bus, 'Black Betty'.
She has also written the script for I Sing of a Maiden, performed in Chapter Arts Centre in 2007, a conversation exploring teenage pregnancy through the eyes of a 16-year-old named Abby.
Rachel Trezise lives in the Rhondda Valley and New York, and is currently working on a second novel.
Bibliography
In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl Parthian, 2000
Fresh Apples Parthian, 2005
Sideways Glances (contributor) Parthian, 2005
Dial M for Merthyr Parthian, 2007
Prizes and awards
2005 Dylan Thomas Prize Fresh Apples