Harrison Solow is The Writer in Residence for the University of Wales, Lampeter. In addition to the duties attendant on this honoured appointment and her lectureship in the English Department, Harrison is the Director of The Saint David's Institute for Wales in the World hosted by the University of Wales, Lampeter in which capacity she represents the university and the country in international intercultural and academic ventures, particularly in America and Canada.

A Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and Editor for the University of California Press in the 1980s and 1990s, Harrison is an award-winning writer (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) with extensive experience in literary and academic publishing, the arts, the corporate world and the entertainment industry, including Hollywood. She is published by major publishing houses, university presses, magazines and journals, in America, Wales, Canada and England.

Harrison was educated at several Jesuit and secular universities in the United States and Canada where she read for undergraduate honours in Philosophy, Theology and English Literature, which she cites as "an invaluable background" for her creative work. In addition to her undergraduate degrees, she holds an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from Mills College, a prestigious women's liberal arts college in California, where she was recently honoured as a Notable Graduate. Harrison's research interests and related publications have spanned moral, pedagogical and cultural writings extending through the English Canon into modern interpretations of several ideological traditions in English and American Literature. Harrison has extensive experience in international cultural and ecumenical exchange, including advocacy and co-operative programmes between the Christian and Jewish community.

Her current literary pursuit (and passion) is the language, culture and literature of Wales, which is both the subject and setting of her epistolary novel Bendithion, in progress. To read a chapter of Bendithion, which won a 2008 Pushcart Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, the most honoured literary prize in America, see :http://www.bu.edu/agni/essays/print/2007/66-solow.html

Harrison is a Mentor in the Women's Universities Mentoring Scheme (WUMS) out of the University of Glamorgan.

She is a member of several academic and professional organisations, including the Welsh Academi and is becoming fluent in Welsh.

RESEARCH

Harrison's research is centred in the literary hinterland between fiction and non-fiction where, she says, "no word equals its referent and the meaning of what is approximated in words lies in their shadow". In her work, Harrison explores the referential relationship of literature, language and ipseity to the matrix in which they form, particularly the delicate symbiosis among language, metalanguage and un-language in English, in which research she is helped immeasurably by Welsh. Rooted in her complex and disparate experience, Harrison's writing, both poetry and prose, attempts, as as Bill Roorbach stated in The Art of Truth, to be "true to the encyclopaedia of self [because] the writerly mind will always err on the side of truth over facts". About her work she states: "It is fiction because I make things up in order to accurately convey what really happens. It is non-fiction because its messages are verifiable. It is obfuscatory, in tribute to the splendour of Welsh storytelling, the hallmark of which is said to be the indistinguishable blend of fact and fantasy".

TEACHING

Current undergraduate courses include: Writing Literary Non-Fiction; Space Place, Time and Hiraeth: Writing about Wales in English; The Worlds Within: The Circumscribed Fictions of Barbara Pym and Anita Brookner;Jewish American Literature and Culture; American Science Fiction and Culture; Writing to Pay the Rent (Professional Non-fiction Writing). Post Graduate Courses encompass a variety of (fiction and non-fiction)Creative Writing Seminars and dissertation supervisions. Past and future courses encompass a wide range of creative writing and modern American and British literature courses both at undergraduate and graduate levels.

SUPERVISION

Enquiries are welcome for BA and MA theses in philosophical, religious or pedagogical literature particularly that which is rooted in Jewish or Catholic traditions,creative writing (short stories and literary non-fiction about Welsh subjects,in particular); American cultural studies; Hollywood-related topics; science fiction and single authors, particularly, 20th and 21st century British women novelists: Barbara Pym (Anglican), Anita Brookner (Jewish), Margaret Drabble, A.S. Byatt (Quaker) and Antonia White (Catholic).

Administrative Duties
	Senior Advisory and Administrative responsibilities as Director of the Saint David's Institute for Wales in the World. All executive, creative and research responsibilities as Writer in Residence. Administrative duties attendant on lecturing, supervising dissertations and those responsibilities attached tothe English Department.

BOOKS

As Author: The Postmasters Song, (short story) in The Ground Beneath Her Feet Cinnamon Press, September 2008 Ersatz Fideles, (poetry) in The Ukraine and Other Poems by Leaf Books, December 2007 Bendithion: An Essay in Two Chapters, in AGNI Literary Journal (Boston University), October 2007 Mater Amabilis, (short story) in Driftwood Journal, 2006 The Apricots and the King, (short story) Farbrengen Magazine, 2003 The Star Trek Sketch Book, (book - co-authored with H.F. Solow) Simon & Schuster, 1996 Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation (book Foreword by Sir Arthur C. Clarke) University of California Press, HC and Simon & Schuster PB, 1994, 1995, 1996.

Writing Awards

Pushcart Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for Bendithion, AGNI, Issue 66, May 2008 Franklin-Christoph International Poetry Competition Short-listed Poem for Weights and Measures February, 2008 Winning Entry, Cinnamon Press, International Competition for Short Fiction for The Postmasters Song January, 2008 Commended Poem, Leaf Books Competition: Poetry, for Erstaz Fidelis, Spring 2007 First Place: Abroad International Writing Competition for Short Fiction, for Mater Amabilis, 2006 First Runner Up: Short Story Category, The William Faulkner-William Wisdom Competition, for Charlotte, 2005

Television, Radio and Print interviews
	The Strange Story of Harrison and Timothy: Article in the Cambrian News, January, 2008 Bendithion: Article in the Cambrian News, November 2007 An Inspirational Little Town: Feature Article in the Cambrian News, June, 2007 From California to Ceredigion: Radio Wales Arts Show (1/2 hour interview programme. May, 2007)