Book Launch - Ambassador of Nowhere

Join us for the launch of Ambassador of Nowhere by Richard Gwyn. Richard will be in conversation with fellow local author and Welsh historian, Jon Gower. Refreshments will be provided! Please note that our events space is on the first floor of the shop, accessible via stairs and lift. Should you have any other access requiremements, please do not to hesitate to contact us.

In Ambassador of Nowhere, Richard Gwyn takes the reader on a series of journeys across Latin America, in search of poems for his landmark anthology, The Other Tiger. He is driven through lunar landscapes in Patagonia, walks in the temperate rainforests of southern Chile and travels to a town on the Rio Magdalena that may or may not exist.

From the betrayal of revolution in Nicaragua to the victims of guerrilla war in Colombia and the threat of narco gang violence in Mexico, Gwyn's lyrical, life-affirming account pays homage to a deeply conflicted and paradoxical continent and its writers. Ambassador of Nowhere is also a book about translation, and the multiple representations of reality that the act of translation sets in motion, even as the author struggles to keep his own life on track when confronted by the demons of an earlier existence.

Richard Gwyn grew up in Breconshire. Following several years in London, he spent a decade travelling on and around the Mediterranean, chronicled in his memoir, The Vagabond's Breakfast (Wales Book of the Year for Non-fiction, 2012). He has published four collections of poetry, most recently Stowaway: A Levantine Adventure, and the novels The Colour of a Dog Running Away, Deep Hanging Out and The Blue Tent. He is the editor and translator of the landmark anthology, The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America. Among his recent translations from Spanish are collections by the poets Darío Jaramillo and Fabio Morábito. He is the author of Ricardo Blanco’s Blog at richardgwyn.com.