Islwyn Ffowc Elis (1924-2004) was one of Wales' most popular authors writing in Welsh. Having grown up near Wrexham and attended university in Aberystwyth and Bangor, he was a conscientious objector in World War II, then a Nonconformist minister and later a lecturer at the University of Wales in Lampeter, and stood several times in local elections as a Plaid Cymru candidate. He won the Prose Medal at the 1951 Eisteddfod, pioneered genres that were unfamiliar to Welsh-language readers and is credited with helping to establish the novel as a major genre in Welsh. In 1999 his debut novel, 'Cysgod y Cryman' (1953) was chosen by the Arts Council of Wales as the most significant Welsh-language novel of the twentieth century.Meic Stephens (1938-2018) was a poet, translator, literature director of the Welsh Arts Council and professor of Welsh Writing in English. He was the editor of 'The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales' (OUP, 1986) and founded 'Poetry Wales', with it becoming the main vehicle of the 'second flowering' of Welsh writing in English under his editorship. He was also a prolific obituarist, mainly for The Independent, publishing two volumes of obituaries of important Welsh people, 'Welsh Lives' and 'More Welsh Lives'.