Congratulations to Laura Wainwright, whose book The Storm's Flora (Seren Books) won the Wales Book of the Year Poetry Award.
Laura Wainwright’s debut collection is a powerful exploration of resilience in the face of ecological and human crises. Here, new life emerges from darkness and turmoil, and flourishes despite it. These poems offer awe-inspiring observations of the natural world rooted in the language, landscapes and histories of Wales. Told with musicality and an artist’s eye for detail, The Storm’s Flora celebrates the earth’s vivid beauty with flair and ingenuity.
Laura Wainwright was born in Cardiff and grew up in Newport, Gwent, where she still lives. She attended school in Newport, and Cardiff University where she attained a BA, MA and PhD in English Literature. Her PhD thesis focused on Anglophone Welsh literature and was later published as New Territories in Modernism: Anglophone Welsh Writing, 1930-1949 by the University of Wales Press. Laura has also published poetry pamphlets, Air and Armour (Green Bottle Press, 2021) – the outcome of a Literature Wales Writer’s Bursary – and Coedcernyw: among other things (Clutag Press, 2023). Thrall: Poems and Art, a collaboration with Robert Minhinnick featuring Laura’s poetry and artwork, was published in February 2025 by Seventh Quarry Press.
Discover the Wales Book of the Year 2026 Winners here.