Local Fires

Joshua Jones (he/him) is a queer, neurodivergent writer & artist from Llanelli, south Wales. He was a Literature Wales Emerging Writer and a Hay Festival Writer at Work. Local Fires, his first work of fiction, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize & Polari First Book Prize. He has published various pamphlets of poetry, including A Fistful of Flowers in collaboration with Caitlin Flood-Molyneux (2022), Three Months in the Zebra Room (Hello America Stereo Cassette, 2024), and The City on Film (Bread and Roses, 2024).

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024.SHORTLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST BOOK AWARD 2024.Local Fires sees debut writer Joshua Jones turn his acute focus to his birthplace of Llanelli, South Wales. Sardonic and melancholic, joyful and grieving, these multifaceted stories may be set in a small town, but they have reach far beyond their locality. From the inertiaof living in an ex-industrial working-class area, to gender, sexuality, toxic masculinity and neurodivergence, Jones has crafted a collection versatile in theme and observation, as the misadventures of the town's inhabitants threaten to spill over into an incendiary finale.Jones runs the Cardiff-based neurodivergent, queer-led community library and art/lit space, Dyddiau Du