Hands of Light gathers poetry and prose from Aberystwyth University's Creative Writing MA around the theme of care, a word its contributors stretch in markedly different directions. A grandchild listens at a nursing-home bedside while memory recedes; a daughter four thousand miles from her mother lives in anticipatory grief; friends, animals, and near-strangers step in where others have not. Care also reaches beyond the human, to a rosy marsh moth on Cors Fochno, to birds of sea and city indicting the species that abandoned them, and to a coastline under pressure from an encroaching sea and new development. Gothic romance, a seventeenth-century deathbed vigil, and a contract killer's comic crisis of conscience sit alongside quieter domestic scenes. What binds the anthology is its attention to ageing, illness, and loneliness, and to the modest, practical gestures through which people sustain one another.
 
ABOUT The Aberystwyth University Creative Writing MA:
The Aberystwyth University Creative Writing MA course sees students engage in workshops, critical and creative discussions, and preparation for future careers in the literary field. This anthology was curated, edited, and launched by students completing their Master’s in 2026 as an optional component of their ‘Writer as Professional’ module. For many of those included, this is their first opportunity to be published.