Our Annual Events
St. David's Day Banquet
Every spring the Society celebrates St. David's Day on the Saturday closest to March 1. In 2024, we held the celebration in person and featured the Rt. Hon. Liz Saville Roberts who joined us by Zoom to talk about what is going on in Wales today and her work as a Plaid Cymru MP (Minister of Parliament).
Annual Picnic
Every summer the Society members meet to elect board members and officers and enjoy food and games -- and the outdoors.
Christmas/Holiday Tea
Every winter in December, society members gather to sing together in four-part harmony, tell stories, listen to other members make music, and enjoy the sweet and savory treats that everyone has brought.
Welsh Events
For information on the North American Festival of Wales (NAFOW), held every year over Labor Day weekend, go to https://festivalofwales.org/index.html.
Well-Read Dragons Book Group
Saturday, December 6, 2025, 11:45 am - 1:00 pm on Zoom
Join us to discuss the book and chat with other members. You do not have to have read (or finished) the book to participate. Contact Ilene Alexander at ilene.dawn@gmail.com for more information.
Book to discuss: The House of Water, by Fflur Dafydd. Hodder & Stoughton, 2025
From a Hay Festival program note: A boundary-pushing thriller told through the lens of a lyrical family drama, The House of Water is both unsettling and thought-provoking. Placing that key in the lock was the last ordinary moment of her life. Iona returns home one evening to find her family murdered and her father missing. Her home is entirely submerged in water. An unnamed girl lies dead in her bed. As the police declare her father the main suspect, Iona is forced to confront how much she really knew about the man who raised her. Hidden in the fragments of her father’s final manuscript, recovered from the flood, an unimaginable secret slowly rises to the surface. Our recommender notes this and Earthly Creatures two of her favorite 2025 books.
List of other books to read and discuss in 2025-2026:
February 6, 2026: Earthly Creatures, by Stevie Davies. Honno Welsh Women’s Press, 2024
Stevie Davies, as two recommenders noted, is one of the Well-Read Dragons “must read” authors, reminding us of previous reads, including Into Suez; Awakening, Equivocator, and Impassioned Clay.
With Earthly Creatures, Davies initially locates characters in 1941 at the home of 19-year old Magdelena Arber, who has been raised in a dissident home in Lubeck, a town near Hamburg. Additionally, as the novel opens Madgalena is being indoctrinated with Nazi beliefs in school and community. Magdelena is assigned war service as a schoolteacher in rural Eastern Prussia, whose world of forests and lakes delight her. But, as monstrous events challenge the beliefs of her upbringing, she becomes disenchanted and must learn to hide her true values, except with two trusted women friends. When the war comes to Eastern Prussia, she must take the child entrusted to her by one of these women, and flee to Lubeck, maneuvering through people and armies uprooted and desperate for safety. As Hitler grudgingly acknowledged “Women’s political hatred is dangerous.” With Earthly Creatures, Davis creates a book that explores its women characters' resistance to Nazi racism, eugenic theory, and misogyny, and the deep personal cost of resisting state-induced terror.
April 4, 2026: How the Irish Saved Civilization - by Thomas Cahill, 1995.
For this year’s “one book can be from another UK country that’s not England,” the recommender notes both that the prose of this historiography is a little thick because it predates the stylistic - more readable and concise - change of contemporary historiography, and that the fascinating history from the 5th century fall of Rome to the early 9th century Middle Ages, makes for a reading that is worth pushing through. I’m not even a huge fan of Irish history, but feel like it’s a must read for anyone interested in the histories of Ireland, Great Britain or Western Europe. Reading this book in April, provides us with time in February to plan for sharing the reading of this historical narrative, as we’ve done with works including The Dragon and the Crescent: Nine Centuries of Welsh Contact with Islam.
June 6, 2026: The Ladies by Doris Grumbach. Harper Collins,1984.
Sharing from Goodreads, the recommender notes, “The Ladies is a touching, imaginative retelling of the story of two of history’s most interesting characters: Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, well-born Irish women who defied all conventions of their eighteenth-century Irish homeland and eloped to the small hamlet of Llangollen in Wales, where they lived as a married couple. In her review, Diane Salvatore calls Grumbach ‘acutely sensitive to the quiet hum of everyday living and the small acquired habits that bond lovers over long periods. It is especially touching to watch the women age as the pages turn, affecting a kind of time-lapse realism that doesn’t diminish the Ladies’ passion or love for each other.’” This book is a dipping back into the reading archive selection, making it a re-read for some, and new for others joining in the June discussion.
August 1, 2026: Welsh [Plural]: Essays on the Future of Wales; edited by Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa, and Iestyn Tyne. Repeater Press, 2022.
The editor’s introduction made it clear that this book would fulfill the group’s desire for a reading experience focused on a diverse and contemporary Wales: “We found ourselves returning to questions of what we mean by Welshness, Welsh identities and Welsh culture. What do these phrases mean to a Cardiffian, or a West Walian; those living in Wales, the Welsh diaspora, those newly arrived in Wales; those with ties across the border, across the sea? What do they mean to the Muslim, agnostic, lapsed Catholic, just-there-for-the-singing nonconformist, the Welsh speaker, Welsh learner, non-Welsh speaker? In order to explore these questions collectively we sought a diversity of perspectives for this book.”
The recommender notes several reviewers calling it “a very rewarding read” and praising “its wonderfully varied collection of pieces by writers of all types and backgrounds,” some who will be known to readers of Welsh literature, and many who will be new names. This mix of essays, experimental pieces, sociological works, memoir, and poetry lets readers engage in a choose-your-own reading adventure among the 19 works.
Book Club Choices from Past Years
2025 - 2026
Fireside Tales, by Daniel Owen
2024 - 2025
The Elected Member, by Bernice Rubens
A Celtic Miscellany: Translations from the Celtic Literature, trans. by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson
Wales: The First & Final Colony, by Adam Price
Braids of Song: Weaving Welsh Music into the American Soul, by Mari Morgan
Sugar and Slate, by Charlotte Williams
Clear, by Carys Davies
2023 - 2024
All Things Betray Thee, by Gwyn Thomas
A Bitter Remedy, by Alis Hawkins
The Long Field, by Pamela Petro (over two meetings)
Whaling, by Nathan Munday
Tryweryn: A New Dawn? The Legacy of the Drowning of Capel Celyn, by Dr Wyn Thomas
2022 - 2023
History of Wales in Twelve Poems by M. Wynn Thomas
The Blue Book of Nebo, by Manon Steffan Ros
Cove, by Cynan Jones
Drift, by Caryl Lewis
I, Eric Ngall: One Man's Journey Crossing Continents from Africa to Europe, by Eric Ngall
My Body Can House Two Hearts, a poetry chapbook by Hanan Issa
2021 - 2022
Salt, by Catrin Kean
Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve by Dannie Abse
History of the Rain by Niall Williams
Impassioned Clay by Stevie Davies
Stillicide by Cynan Jones
Poems by Gillian Clarke
2020 - 2021
Broken Ghost by Niall Griffiths
The Moving of the Water by David Lloyd,
Welsh Saints on the Mormon Trail: The Story of Welsh Emigration to Salt Lake City in the Nineteenth Century by Wil Aaron
The Salt Path: A Memoir by Raynor Winn,
The Valley, The City, The Village by Glyn Jones,
White Star by Robin Llywelyn
2019 - 2020
Flame in the Mountains, Williams Pantycelyn, Ann Griffith and the Welsh Hymns by H.A. Hodges, ed. E. Wyn James (scheduled but not discussed because of pandemic)
I Let You Go by Claire Mackintosh
Ibrahim and Reenie by David Llewellyn
New Welsh Short Stories, ed. by Francesca Rhydderch & Penny Thomas
Pigeon by Alys Conrad
A Simple Scale by David Llewellyn
2018-2019
Shoes for Anthony by Emma Kennedy
Dark Territory by Jerry Hunter
Rebecca’s Daughters by Dylan Thomas
Aberfan by Gaynor Madgwich
Rice Paper Diaries by Francesca Rhydderch
Remember No More: A DS Kite Mystery by Jan Newton.
2017 - 2018
Bred of Heaven by Jasper Rees
A Childhood in a Welsh Mining Valley by Vivian Jones
The Long Dry by Cynan Jones
The Breathing and/or All the Souls by Mary-Ann Constantine
The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise by Crystal Jeans
Reader Choice – Short Stories
2016 - 2017
Everything I Found on the Beach by Cynan Jones
The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail: Travelers to the Wilder Reaches of Wales by Byron Rogers
The Owl Service by Alan Garner
Addlands by Tom Bullough
Land of My Neighbours by Barry Pilton
Presenting Saunders Lewis by Alun R. Jones and Gwyn Thomas
2015 – 2016
Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals by Wendy Jones
I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers
The Dig by Cynan Jones
Contact! A Book of Encounters by Jan Morris
Wales on the Western Front by John Richards
Reader Choice – poetry
2014 – 2015
Dai Country by Alun Richards
Beyond the Pampas: In Search of Patagonia by Imogen Rhia Herrad.
David Jones in the Great War by Thomas Dilworth
Faith, Hope & Love by Llwyd Owen
American Interior by Gruff Rhys
The Awakening by Kate Roberts and/or Awakening by Stevie Davies
2013 - 2014
The Gospel of Us by Owen Sheers
Turf or Stone by Margiad Evans
Testimonies: A Novel by Patrick O’Brian.
Into Suez by Stevie Davies
One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard
Reader Choice – White Raven’s by Owen Sheers, or any other book(s) in the Seren Mabinogion series
2012 - 2013
Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal
Darkness Visible by Trilby Busch
History on the Welsh Church in Jackson, Ohio: Travel, Fishing and Farewells by Evan O. Roberts, trans. by Martha Davies
Dragon & Crescent by Grahame Davies
Rape of the Fair Country by Alexander Cordell
Resistance by Owen Shears
2011 – 2012
Faded Coat of Blue by Owen Parry
Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins
Written in Blood: Crime Fiction with a Twist, various authors
The Children of First Man by James Alexander Thom, or any book about Prince Madog
Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier by Anne Kelly Knowles
A Man's Estate by Emyr Humphreys
2010 - 2011
History on Our Side: Wales & the 1984–85 Miner’s Strike by Hywel Francis
The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams
Real Wales by Peter Finch
Twenty Thousand Saints by Flur Dafydd
Stranger Within the Gates by Bertha Thomas
The White Lane by Kate Roberts
2009 - 2010
Baghdad Barcarolle. How Beatrice Ohanessian Became Iraq’s Foremost Classical Pianist by On Angel Mountain by Holly Windle
Before the Last All Clear by Ray Evans
Sea Holly by Robert Minhinnick
Falls the Shadow by Sharon Penman
Reader Choice – any book about King Arthur
Reader Choice – book by Robertson Davies, Canadian mystery writer
2004 - 2008
Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman
On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
The Matter of Wales by Jan Morris
Feet in Chains by Kate Roberts
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
Travels in an Old Tongue by Patricia Petro
A View Across the Valley: Short Stories by Women from Wales, 1850-1950, Jane Aaron, ed.
What I Saw in Bethesda by Charles Sheridan
The Fight for Welsh Freedom by Gwynfor Evans
A Place in the Mind: A Boyhood in Llyn by R. Gerallt Jones
A Welsh Childhood by Alice Thomas Ellis
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
Urban Dreams: Rural Realities by Daniel Butler and Bel Crewe
Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare
Sugar for Slate by Charlotte Williams
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi
Early History of the Welsh in the Proscairon District of Wisconsin by Daniel Williams; translated by Phillips G. Davies, updated by Martha Davies
Westering Home by Audrey McClellan
Wild Wales by George Borrow