Christopher Meredith (born 1954) is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and translator from Tredegar, Wales. Biography Meredith was born in Tredegar, Wales. His father, Emrys, from Tredegar, was a steelworker and former collier who had also served as a Royal Marine Commando during WW2. His mother Joyce (née Roberts), from Troedrhiwgwair, was a former maid and factory worker and later a home help. He has two brothers, Andrew and Gary. The latter is an actor and was for many years artistic director of Gwent Theatre. Christopher Meredith was educated at Tredegar Comprehensive school and studied philosophy and English at Aberystwyth University where he was taught by Jeremy Hooker and Ned Thomas. After a spell of unemployment and working as a steelworks labourer and later a machine cleaner, he trained as a teacher at Swansea University. He taught English at the comprehensive school in Brecon from the end of the 70s to the early 90s, during which time he began publishing poetry, articles, fiction and reviews in English. In 1993 he became a lecturer in creative writing at the then University of Glamorgan. This became the University of South Wales and he went on to become a professor of creative writing, running the subject in later years. This subject, established in the university by the poet Tony Curtis with Rob Middlehurst, included among its teachers Sheenagh Pugh, Catherine Merriman, Matthew Francis, Philip Gross, Desmond Barry, Helen Dunmore, Gillian Clarke and others. He left higher education in 2013 and is now an emeritus professor. He has two sons and four grandchildren and lives with his wife in Brecon. Writing Meredith began publishing poems, articles and review while he was a schoolteacher. His first two novels and two collections of poetry were published in this period. His first collection of poems, This (1984) won an Eric Gregory Award while still in manuscript. His first novel, Shifts (1988), is set in the late 1970s against the decline of heavy industry in south Wales and has been called 'the classic account' of the post-industrial experience (by Stephen Knight in One Hundred Years of Fiction), a Welsh novel, a British working class novel, a modernist novel, and 'a poetic novel of ideas'. It won international attention and has never been out of print. After a second book of poems, Snaring Heaven (1990), his second novel, Griffri (1991) appeared. Utterly different from the first, this is