Richard Gwyn is a writer and translator. He grew up in the Bannau Brycheiniog of south Wales, and following studies in social anthropology at the LSE and several years in London, he spent a decade travelling on and around the Mediterranean, chronicled in his memoir The Vagabond’s Breakfast (Wales Book of the Year, non-fiction, 2012).

His first novel, The Colour of a Dog Running Away (2005), set in Barcelona, was published by Doubleday in the USA and translated into many languages. His other novels include Deep Hanging Out and The Blue Tent, which appeared in French translation as Les Invités (Losfeld, 2022). His poetry collections include Walking on Bones, Sad Giraffe Café and most recently, Stowaway: A Levantine Adventure (2019). 

Richard spent much of the time between 2011-2016 travelling in Latin America, preparing and translating a major anthology from Spanish, The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America (Seren 2016). A chronicle of these journeys, Ambassador of Nowhere, was published by Seren in 2024. His most recent book is Some Miraculous Promised Land: In Search of James Dickson Innes (2025).

He received the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for nonfiction (USA) in 2023, and has twice been shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ Premio Valle Inclán, winning the 2025 award for Invisible Dog (Carcanet), his translations of the Mexican poet Fabio Morábito.

Richard is represented by Anna Webber at A.M. Heath.