During his relatively short life Geraint Goodwin made his name as a novelist and short story writer of the first rank.
He fought bravely against illness whilst choosing to live in difficult circumstances to concentrate on his craft.
He loved Montgomeryshire with a passion and the love of his country is obvious from his writing.
He was born in Newtown in 1903 and was very aware of his birthplace's proximity to England.
His father died when he was eight-years-old and his mother then married a local shopkeeper.
After leaving Tywyn County school, he became an apprentice on The Montgomeryshire Express, before moving to London's Fleet Street to work on The Daily Sketch.
In 1930 he found that he was sufferinng from TB and he had to spend months in a sanatorium.
This experience provided the impetus for his first novel, Call Back Yesterday (1935)
After its publication, he secured a contract to write another two novels and he gave up his work as a journalist to concentrate on his creative writing full-time.
He moved with his wife and daughter from London to Dagnell in Hertfordshire where he started to write about rural life.
The first product of this stage of his career was The Heyday in the Blood (1936), his most famous work, which was translated into Welsh by Mair Closs Roberts in 1976.
His next novel, Watch for the Morning was published in 1938 which was followed the next year by Geraint's final novel, Come Michaelmas.
This book was written in Upper Corris, near Machynlleth, where he had moved to live in a cottage in 1938, and where his second daughter was born.
Geraint Goodwin also published a collection of short stories, The White Farm, in 1938.
He left the hospital to be with his family in his new home in Montgomery where he died in 1941.
Geraint Goodwin's books are set in the Marches, an area he loved.
Geraint Goodwin's collected stories was published in 1976 and there is a selection of his work published in The Shearing, published in 2004.
There is a plaque in his honour placed on the wall of Barclays Bank in Newtown.
Heyday in the Blood was re-printed in the Library of Wales series published by Parthian Books in November 2008.
The publication of the new edition of Heyday in the Blood will be celebrated at the next Powysland Club lecture, when local author and Gregynog librarian Mary Oldham will be talking about Goodwin's life and introducing the audience to his novels and his many extraordinary short stories.
The lecture "A Neglected Newtown Author? Geraint Goodwin" will be at the Berriew Community Hall at 3pm on Saturday 1 November.
Novelist and short story writer who published four novels and a collection of short stories.
