Since the announcement, with deep regret, that Wales Arts Review was to close due to a substantial shortfall in funding, we have been inundated with hundreds of messages from our readers expressing their shock and sadness at the news, with many urging us to find some way of continuing our work. This support has overwhelmed us all, and we thank you all for it. But as well as these messages, we have also had many offers of help, and in the past week our Managing Editor Phil Morris has been working hard with those organisations and other funding bodies to find a way of Wales Arts Review operating through 2015 and beyond. A number have come forward to offer ‘in-kind’ support and several trusts have pledged some limited funding. More significantly, Wales Arts Review is to engage in further and wider discussions with Arts Council Wales in 2015 to develop its ambitious programme through a sustainable business plan. The aim of this new plan will be to find a means by which Wales Arts Review can successfully build on the foundation of its Welsh Books Council grant. A revised budget has been agreed by our editorial team, who, in response to the public sentiment, are as determined and motivated as ever to produce a world-class journal, and several of whom have chosen to continue working for Wales Arts Review on a voluntary basis.
Details of our plans are yet to be finalised, but it appears increasingly likely that we will be able to announce in January that Wales Arts Review is to re-open, following a brief hiatus, in the early spring of 2015. We trust this good news will be a welcome Christmas ‘gift’ to our readers, and we hope that we can count on your valued support in the New Year.
In addition to this, and by way of celebration, we are publishing four brand new podcasts. ‘Read by the Author’ (almost our swan song) will now be the beginning of a new series of Wales’ top writers reading their contributions to our Fiction Map of Wales anthology that was published in November. Click on the links below to download the free gifts.
Thank you once again fr your support, and have a very merry Christmas.
From everybody at Wales Arts Review.
READ BY THE AUTHOR