Gwyneth Louis, National Poet of Wales 2005-06

Gwyneth Louis is the former National Poet of Wales and a winner of the Crown at the National Eisteddfod in 2012. Her poetry has been carved into the very structure of the Millennium Center in Cardiff, in letters six feet tall – she loves when local people say “I’ll meet you under the words.”

Dewi Prysor, Welsh Poet

Dewi Prysor is a poet, novelist, and songwriter who brings Welsh alive in the pub and draws big laughs at the Stomp. His great-great-grandmother lived and died in Capel Celyn, the Welsh-speaking community that was flooded by the UK government — helping to spark the Welsh language movement of the 1960s.

David Crystal, Linguist

David Crystal is a linguist who lives in Wales. An expert on endangered languages and language death, he has been thinking about language for over 50 years, and is the author or editor of over 100 books, including The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.

Dafydd Iwan, Singer/Songwriter

Dafydd Iwan, a Welsh singer-songwriter, has been called the Woody Guthrie of the Welsh language movement. His song “Yma O Hyd” (Still Here), heard in Language Matters, became a famous anthem of the Welsh language movement.

Grahame Davies, Poet

Grahame Davies is a Welsh poet, novelist, editor, and literary critic, the author of 17 books in Welsh and English and the winner of numerous prizes, including the Wales Book of the Year Award.

Siân Teifi, Welsh Storyteller

Siân Teifi is a Welsh storyteller. She grew up in a village where everyone spoke Welsh but the lessons at school were entirely in English. Today she carries on the tradition of Welsh storytelling – in Welsh-language schools.

Jerry Hunter, Professor, Bangor University

Jerry Hunter, a novelist and scholar of Welsh literature, is a professor at Bangor University. Born and bred in Cincinnati, Ohio, he now lives in Wales and became the first American to win a major literary prize at the Eisteddfod.

Beatboxer Ed Holden, also known as Mr. Phormula

Rapper Ed Holden, AKA Mr. Phormula, could speak Welsh but chose not to when he was in school. After hearing Welsh rap, “it just went boom,” and since then Ed has been talking Welsh every day – while also doing a fair amount of bilingual hiphop in the pub and elsewhere.

Ifor ap Glyn, Poet and Television Presenter

Ifor ap Glyn is a Welsh-language poet and television presenter, winner of a Crown at the National Eisteddfod in 1999 and 2013, and host of the television program “Popeth yn Gymraeg (Everything in Welsh)” .