The Gŵyl Crime Cymru Festival is back and it’s more dastardly, devious and deadly than ever.
From 17-19 and 22-24 April, Wales’ only dedicated crime fiction festival returns for its fourth year of murder, mystery and mayhem, fully online and absolutely free.
Tickets can be booked at www.gwylcrimecymrufestival.co.uk.
With events in English and Welsh, this year’s line-up includes Sam Blake, John Banville, Abir Mukherjee, Vaseem Kahn, Sarah Ward, Simon McCleave, Alis Hawkins and Fflur Dafydd.
They’ll be chatting about their fiction, ranging from the heartlands of Wales to the canals of Venice - with a few imaginary worlds and fascinating historical eras in between. The programme kicks off at 6.30pm on 17 April with All in the Mind, when Penny Batchelor, Liz Webb and BE Jones will be chatting to Louise Mumford about their psychological thrillers.
Join the fun with the GCC headline event at 8pm that night when Dr Jacky Collins (Dr Noir) will be in conversation with Elly Griffiths, author of the bestselling Dr Ruth Galloway series and the Brighton Mysteries. Elly won the 2020 Edgar Award for her novel The Stranger Diaries and, in 2016, was awarded the CWA Dagger in The Library.
The Last Word, published in January 2024, is the fourth book to feature her detective DI Harbinder Kaur. In addition to sessions on psychological thrillers, police procedurals, historical fiction and much more, the festival programme includes panels on true crime and writing crime for teenagers. Leading crime podcasters Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee, both award-winning crime writers and hosts of the Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast, will be discussing their craft. The Scene of the Crime (Why Wales?) When you consider that readers’ appetite for crime fiction just keeps on growing, it might seem something of a mystery that, until recently, Wales never had a dedicated crime festival of its own. Crime Cymru, the Welsh crime writing cooperative behind this festival, aimed to change that and to show crime readers across the UK, and farther afield, what Wales has to offer.