Biography owen sheers

Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 but brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales. He was educated at King Henry VIII Comprehensive in Abergavenny and read English at New College, Oxford, before gaining his MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia.

The winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the 1999 Vogue Young Writer's Award, Sheers' first collection of poetry, The Blue Book, was shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward Prize Best 1st Collection 2001.

His début prose work The Dust Diaries, a travel memoir set in Zimbabwe, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and won the Welsh Book of the Year 2005.

In 2004 he was Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust and was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society's 20 Next Generation Poets.

Sheers' second collection of poetry, Skirrid Hill was published in November 2005 and won a Society of Authors Somerset Maugham Award.

Skirrid Hill has been studied