With her forthcoming title, Me and Aaron Ramsey, Carnegie Award winning author Manon Steffan Ros conjures a beautifully nuanced slice of Welsh life that celebrates football, family and finding your feet. Alison King caught up with Manon prior to publication to talk about her powerful new story.

As someone who has never engaged with football, I am fascinated by the culture and the community that it encapsulates. You capture both of those things so well in Me and Aaron Ramsey - I was utterly swept up in that world, despite having no real reference points. Where does your own passion for football come from?

I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in football until 2016. The idea of it bored me; I didn't understand why people got such a sense of identity from the bunch of people they happened to support kicking a ball around a field!

Wales qualified for the Euros in 2016, which sparked an interest in football in my eldest son, who then got me interested. I was firmly on the bandwagon, and I'm still on it now! There's such grace and skill and beauty in football, and I can't unsee it. I've been surprised by the sense of belonging one gets from supporting a football team, and the joy of being tribal. I think I'd always thought of the tribalism aspect as a bad thing, but now I can see that it's not about hating the other team and wanting them to lose- It's about loving your own team.

I've been in the Kop in Anfield, underneath the huge banners that the fans pass around, singing You'll Never Walk Alone. There is absolutely nothing like it. It's the opposite to loneliness.

Following the success of Nebo, I imagine it must have been quite difficult to find the story you wanted to tell next. I'm curious as to how you landed on Me and Aaron Ramsey - it's very different, perhaps that was part of the appeal?

Nebo came out in 2018 in Welsh, and so those questions of what to do next were answered some time ago! The first thing I wrote after Nebo was a crime novel- very different, and that was no mistake. I didn’t want to write the same thing again, because I want to respect each novel within its own space and theme. This novel is translated and will be published in the autumn.

Me and Aaron Ramsey made sense to me as the next step, but also just as a novel in its own right. The whole mood and feel and meat of it is so different, but there are similarities thematically. I think they’re both novels about the relationship between a parent and a child, and that tricky bit between childhood and adulthood.

In Me and Aaron Ramsey, the reader spends time with a family that is coming apart at the seams, and although there are some very tense moments peppered throughout the story, the atmosphere created is one of hope, and trust and love. Did you set out to depict it this way or did it happen naturally as the story evolved?

I write a lot about parents separating, and also parents who stay together but are unhappy. When I was younger, there were a lot of middle grade books which tackled this- Paula Danziger, in particular, tackled it masterfully. But I think there’s a danger now that because it’s a more common occurrence in children's lives, we think it maybe isn’t such a big deal, and so we don’t write about it so much. Or we tend to write parents who are together and happy, or are separated - not much in between.

I always try to write with empathy, and am aware that I don’t really want to write goodies and baddies. It’s just not my style, and I don’t really believe that people are like that.

I want to ask you about Sam's brushes with anxiety, which colour his experiences throughout the book. What did you want to achieve by exploring this, and how did you approach shaping Sam's emotional journey?

To me, Sam’s anxiety was a natural progression from having to hear parents arguing often at home. I think that we all experience some level of anxiety- it’s a natural and often useful reaction to worrying situations. I wanted to explore how to deal with the feeling when it does surface, the different coping mechanisms people have. This is admittedly close to home for me- I remember being quite an anxious child, worrying about war and nukes and whether my friends really liked me until very late at night. I came up with ways to stem the worry, and Sam does the same.

in a house

Let’s talk about Mattie - there's a real sense of freedom in her and I found her to be a lot of fun and also unexpected, in terms of the way little sisters are depicted in children's fiction. Where did she spring from and did you enjoy writing her?

I love Mattie! I think that there’s a lot of sibling rivalry and tension in books, and although that is often a reflection of real life, it isn’t always the case. When there is tension between adults hold, siblings can be allies. Siblings can also be friends! I really wanted a cool and happy little girl in this novel, whose brother really loved her and who was more than the stereotypical annoying younger sibling.

I don’t know how much you can say but I’m sure everyone reading would love to know what's on the horizon for you, in terms of writing projects.

What’s on the horizon? Lots I hope! I absolutely love my job and I get antsy when a few days pass where I haven’t written anything. I have a few books coming soon- Feather, is another middle grade novel, and there’s the  crime I mentioned earlier, which is set in my home town of Bethesda. But I’m itching to write something new now, a YA book, but I’m not going to jinx it by telling you about it novel before it’s taken root…

A big thank you to Manon Steffan Ros for the interview, to Alison King for conducting this and to Firefly Press for the opportunity.