Academi

If you are a writer or book lover in Wales chances are you’ll have come across Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society for Authors. As a writer I find Academi and invaluable resource and support network.
Academi has a face. This face is Peter Finch. A known name on the Cardiff performance scene and, for those who wish to know lots and lots about Cardiff, he is the writer of Real Cardiff 1,2 and 3. Three books about Cardiff. Feed your thirst for knowledge, get them all.
Academi run all manner of events, courses, competitions, including the Cardiff International Poetry Competition, with the support of Cardiff Council and offering a First Prize of £5000, conferences, tours by authors, lectures, international exchanges, events for schools, readings, literary performances and festivals. They are also responsible for the National Poet of Wales project and the Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales. They do all of the above thanks to dosh etc. from the Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government.
They also give out bursaries each year to allow writers time to write their next masterpiece, and they help the thriving literary scene within Cardiff and beyond by helping us raise the cash needed to run all out literary events and pay poets and things like that. They still haven’t given me a first prize or a bursary, mind. But I’m young, I’m sure they’ll be kind eventually: P