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Sam Adams was born in 1934, and raised in the small mining valley of Gilfach Goch, when it still possessed three working pits. In common with most of the valley's children at that time, his father and grandfathers were mineworkers. He was educated at a local primary school, Tonyrefail Grammar School and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he studied English. He began writing in the corners of a busy working life in the education service, emerging first as a poet. His work appeared in all the Anglo-Welsh magazines and he became successively reviews editor then editor of Poetry Wales.
For the University of Wales Press he has written three monographs in the 'Writers of Wales' series, on Geraint Goodwin, T J Llewelyn Prichard and Roland Mathias, and edited Mathias's Collected Poems and Collected Short Stories. His three novels, Prichard's Nose and In the Vale (both Y Lolfa), and The Road to Zarauz (Parthian) have attracted critical praise, as has Where the Stream Ran Red (Y Lolfa), an amalgam of family and local history. His connection with Manchester-based Carcanet began in 1974 when he edited Ten Anglo-Welsh Poets for the press. Since 1982 he has made more than 150 contributions to its magazine PN Review.
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