Festival of the Ghost

Set in contemporary Cardiff, this diverse, pacey, high-concept time-warp crime novella explores themes of violence, ritual and alternative realities, while it seeks to honour the victims of serial killers and challenge the way that some have become part of the tourism industry. A grieving young man living with OCD discovers he can witness the events of the past. While searching for his recently deceased sister’ s thesis, he strives to avoid the attention of its subject, a religious sect devoted to The Ripper’ s Welsh double, ‘ the Butcher of Butetown’ .

Joã o Morais has recently completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. He was a prizewinner in the New Welsh Writing Awards 2021 Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Theme or Setting, and has been shortlisted for the Academi Rhys Davies Short Story Prize, the Percy French Prize for Comic Verse and the All Wales Comic Verse Award. He won the 2013 Terry Hetherington Prize for Young Writers, and has been selected twice for a Hay Festival’ s Writers at Work residency. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including New Welsh Reader and Roundyhouse.