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> About Rachel - Biography

Rachel Trezise was born in Cwmparc in the Rhondda Valley in south Wales in 1978. Her first words at eight months were, 'This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy went nuts.'

Her parents separated and divorced when she was four. Subsequently, she was brought up by her mother, a barmaid and cleaner. Her childhood was a troubled one, punctuated by abuse and neglect. At fourteen she run away from home and lived on the streets of English cities until police located her and took her home. She resumed school life at Treorchy Comprehensive and at sixteen began producing and editing a local music fanzine called Smack Rupunzel.

Rachel Trezise - Photo: Lisa HockingShe studied Journalism and English at Glamorgan University in Pontypridd and Geography and History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, simultaneously writing her first autobiographical novel and working in local factories, making mugs, television aerials and LED displays. She graduated in 2000 and her first book 'In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl,' was published by Parthian in the same year.

Described as 'A child's Christmas in Wales where the only present you can hope for is that your mam really does kill your dad with the bread-knife this time,' the book attracted much critical acclaim but marked the beginning of a fraught and ongoing battle between its author and the Welsh tourist board.

In 2002 the book won a place on the Orange Futures List, an initiative designed by the Orange Prize for Fiction to identify and promote twenty one young female authors at the beginning of the century. Trezise shared the honour with amongst others, Rachel Seiffert and Zadie Smith. 'In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl' is studied in many Welsh Universities.

Later in the same year Trezise was chosen by the Guardian Hay Festival to be one of the first writers to participate in Scritture Giovani, an annual project conceived by the Literary Festival of Mantova, Italy, The International Literature Festival of Berlin and the Guardian Hay Festival, devised to promote young European writers.

She began work as a freelance journalist writing features on music and the arts for the Big Issue Cymru and the New Welsh Review and her essay about controversial Welsh artist Neale Howells appeared in the seminal Sideways Glances, (Parthian, 2005). She contributed fiction to many Welsh anthologies including Wales, Half Welsh, (Bloomsbury, 2004) and Urban Welsh, (Parthian, 2005).

In 2004 the Italian translation of 'In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl' La Mia Pelle Sporca was published by Einaudi. In 2003, major fashion magazine Harpers & Queen called Trezise 'the new face of literature.' Peter Florence, writing for the feature said, 'Rachel Trezise is the first writer of her generation to explore the territory of Welsh drug culture and poverty, and at the same time be laugh-out-loud funny. She's a great comedian.' But not many people agreed with him.

Her second book 'Fresh Apples' was published in 2005; a collection of eleven short stories which speak of drugs, sex, adultery, stalking, child abuse, violence and horrible first sexual experiences, (all the happy things). Geographically they move from Cardiff to a rave in Cornwall to New York's Coney Island. There are brief stops in London and Nottingham but at their heart the Rhondda, mired in strength sapping poverty pulses continually. It's a portrait of a place where fly-by-night factories have replaced coal mines and steel works, television and pop music have swept away chapel religion and the chosen drugs of recreation are heroin and cocaine.

In 2006, 'Fresh Apples,' won the inaugural EDS Dylan Thomas Prize, an international award designed to reward the best young writer in the English speaking world with a huge $120,000 purse. Judges from the competition described the work as 'easily compared to James Joyce's' Dubliners,' and 'an original voice risen from the valleys not only to tell the stories of the Welsh but to resonate across the world.' Trezise - 2. Welsh Tourist Board - Nil.

'Fresh Apples' and 'In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl' were subsequently published in Australia in 2007 with Italian and Danish translations to follow. Shortly after accepting the prize, Trezise took up writer's residence at the University of Texas, Austin, and married her husband in Las Vegas.

Part reportage, part social history and part memoir, her third book records the struggles of a rock band from the wrong side of the tracks trying to stay afloat in an ever changing musical and social climate. The band were Midasuno, a gaggle of Merthyr kids with a ton of conviction and a penchant for neck breaking guitar riffs that she first encountered in her days freelancing for The Big Issue Cymru. She shared their tour-bus 'Black Betty' in summer 2005 and watched as they razed the British toilet circuit, signed a record deal, left a label, had a to-do about a lampshade, got drunk, took drugs, broke down (mentally and automotively), signed another record deal and threw a vacuum cleaner at a window.

'Dial M for Merthyr,' was published in 2007 and has been described as a twisted Almost Famous and a The Dark Philosophers for the 21st Century. Two months after its publication Midasuno's debut album 'Songs In The Key of Fuck' was released to rapturous acclaim.

Trezise's first venture into theatre, a script for 'I Sing of a Maiden,' a conversation between the ancient and contemporary exploring teenage pregnancy through the eyes of sixteen-year-old Abby (performed by Carys Eleri and interspersed with folk songs written and performed by Charlotte Greig) played to sell-out audiences in Chapter Arts Centre in early 2007.

Trezise now divides her time between New York City and Treorchy in the Rhondda Valley where she lives with her husband and her cat. She's working on her second novel, various pieces of journalism and theatre and enjoys baking cakes.