# The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir - Hardcover

by **Pamela Petro** (Author)

**For readers of _H Is for Hawk_, an intimate memoir of belonging and loss and a mesmerizing travelogue through the landscapes and language of Wales**  
_Hiraeth_ is a Welsh word that's famously hard to translate. Literally, it can mean "long field" but generally translates into English, inadequately, as "homesickness." At heart, hiraeth suggests something like a bone-deep longing for an irretrievable place, person, or time--an acute awareness of the presence of absence.

In _The Long Field_, Pamela Petro braids essential hiraeth stories of Wales with tales from her own life--as an American who found an ancient home in Wales, as a gay woman, as the survivor of a terrible AMTRAK train crash, and as the daughter of a parent with dementia. Through the pull and tangle of these stories and her travels throughout Wales, hiraeth takes on radical new meanings. There is traditional hiraeth of place and home, but also queer hiraeth; and hiraeth triggered by technology, immigration, ecological crises, and our new divisive politics. On this journey, the notion begins to morph from a uniquely Welsh experience to a universal human condition, from deep longing to the creative responses to loss that Petro sees as the genius of Welsh culture. It becomes a tool to understand ourselves in our time.

A finalist for the Wales Book of the Year Award and named to the _Telegraph_'s and _Financial Times's_ Top 10 lists for travel writing, _The Long Field_ is an unforgettable exploration of "the hidden contours of the human heart."  

### Author Biography

**Pamela Petro** is a writer, artist, and educator and the author of four books, including _Sitting Up with the Dead: A Storied Journey through the American South_ (published by Arcade) and _Travels in an Old Tongue:_ _Touring the World Speaking Welsh._ Her work has appeared in the _New York Times, Atlantic, Granta, Guernica, Paris Review_, and others. Pamela teaches creative writing at Smith College and in Lesley University's MFA Program, and is codirector of the Dylan Thomas Summer School at the University of Wales, where she is a fellow. Pamela is also a visual artist who lives in Northampton, MA, with her partner, Marguerite, and Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Topaz.

**Number of Pages:** 356

**Dimensions:** 1.16 x 9.28 x 6.39 IN

**Publication Date:** August 15, 2023

## Details

- **Price:** 27.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 27.99 USD | In stock |

## Images

- The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir - Hardcover

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