Simon Rees is a freelance writer living in Cardiff. He was born in Chelmsford to a Welsh father (from Pembroke) and an English mother. He studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and taught English in Italy and at Kyoto University. He was Welsh National Opera’s dramaturg from 1989 to 2012, editing programmes, researching for productions, translating surtitles and lecturing on operas. He has published several novels, The Devil’s Looking-Glass, (Methuen), Making a Snowman and Nathaniel and Mrs Palmer (Penguin), winning a Betty Trask award and a Hawthornden Fellowship. An early collection of poems, The New World, was published in 1986 by Three Tigers Press, and a collection of children’s verse Animals, Beasts and Creatures was published by Poetry Salzburg Press in 2010. The Wood below Coelbren, a poetry collection, was published by Poetry Salzburg Press in 2014. He has also published poems in Poetry Wales, Poetry Salzburg Review, Borderlines, Light Quarterly, Candelabrum, Fourteen,), librettos (Hadrian at Antinoopolis in Poetry Salzburg Review) and has collaborated with Welsh composer Mervyn Burtch on Twm Sion Cati, The Song Contest of Birds and Beasts and a variety of songs. He wrote the libretto for the world’s shortest opera, The Sands of Time, with composer Peter Reynolds; this got into the Guinness Book of Records. He has translated a dozen opera librettos for singing and over 100 for surtitles. He has published the novels Blomefylde and the Necromancer, Waterfall and Scribal Error, and the play Adagio for the Clockmaker, as e-books on Amazon Kindle. He lectures online and face to face for the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the Arts Society, Opera Plus, Fred. Olsen Cruises and Martin Randall Travel, covering topics that include literature, opera, art history, architecture, history and topography.
