Can you describe how you started writing your first book Grits, published in 2000?

Well, I was partying a lot, in the mid-nineties. Supposed to be working towards a postgrad, but I was finding university so uninteresting and bland. . . peopled by upper-middle-class kids who had no real interest or passion for the subject. Simply a learning manufactury with no drive towards individual thought or questioning.

I had no momey, and so had to periodically break off from studying to work on sites or in factories; workmates there I found much more interesting than fellow students. My recreational life was also as arduous as my working life, and I'd spend days, weeks, months, out of it.

I realized I was forgetting much of what life was throwing at me so I began to write it down, in the voices I was hearing. And Grits grew. More to it than that, obviously, but that's the basic genesis.

You've had seven books published and have more on the way, do you ever struggle to keep going?

It's never a struggle, no. It's hard work, and I never switch off, but it's never a struggle. Is it a struggle to breathe? It's as important to me as air and water and love and God. Plus I need the money that writing brings. . . writer's block doesn't exist; it's only for those who can afford the luxury of being idle. Of course there are days when it doesn't flow, but then I'll go for a long walk or read something or get drunk. Or all three. It can't be forced. It can sometimes force you, tho.

Could you describe your new book?

There are three; guides to both Aberystwyth and Liverpool, and a memoir/travelogue about Australia. And there'll be a new novel - a look at the celebrity culture of today called A Great Big Shining Star. It'll be full of blood and puke and thunder. Or are you talking about Runt? Well, that's the story of what we've lost. Told in a tiny vocabulary.

What brought you to West Wales, and what made you stay?

I came here primarily to study for a postgrad, but I wanted to move back to Wales anyway. Find the place that first propelled my blood. Brought up in Liverpool, with relatives in Wales, the country always seemed the place where I felt I belonged, and, indeed, my roots here now go deep.

What makes me stay? Aw Jeez, many things. . . Not least the continuing resistance to the embourgoisement that's creeping across Britain and has almost entirely engulfed England already. There are signs that Wales is beginning to bow to this too, but we've got a fair few years yet, I think. And hope.

Do the relationships between North and Mid Wales and Liverpool provide interesting cultural themes to draw on?

Of course, yes. Incredibly rich. The Welsh influence on Liverpool, alongside of course the Irish, gives the city it's unique, Celtic feel; in England but not of it.

I don't want to say any more because it's a theme I return to in my writing and I don't want, in any way, to undermine it's energy anywhere else but in my books.

It has been said you were sent to Snowdonia on an outward bound course, would you recommend the experience for other young people in trouble?

Well, it worked for me; gave me an alternative outlet for my energies. Exhausted from a day in the mountains, smelling, curled up in a tent on a peak with the wind screaming outside. . . there, you can find a peace and a calmness that has absolutely nothing to do with comfort. It's the same with finding a God. That's what life's about. Comfort should never come into it. Peace always does.

A sense of landscape, place, and identity seem impossible to untangle in your work...

You're right; it's difficult to untangle. So much so that I can't do it myself. If I could paraphrase my books, or condense them into a soundbite, I wouldn't've bothered writing them in the first place. I know this isn't very helpful but everything you need to know here is in my books. And, anyway, I'm still trying to work it out.

You've said that violence must be looked at by all of us. Can you give us an example of a violent scene or character in your work that you feel might be difficult to 'witness' but is important nevertheless?

Well, obviously Ianto's murders in Sheepshagger, and of course the vileness that befalls him as a child. I want to show how violent acts come from a shrivelled soul and contribute to the further attenuation of that soul, altho in many ways, of course, Ianto's savagery is as natural as that of the stoat's and buzzard's that he regards around him.

I wanted to show, there, how truly horrible acts of violence are; rob them completely of anything approaching the titillatory, show that there are consequences, show that the preciousness of life is destroyed irreperably. It's incumbent, I feel, on non-violent people to make a study of violence; we don't get tainted by it. Send an innocent into the human heart's dark valleys. It can't be done any other way.

What advice would you give would-be writers in Mid Wales?

Same as I'd give to writers anywhere; read everything - including the list of ingredients on the air-freshener canister if you're on the toilet without any other printed material to hand - and write whenever you can.

Write write write and never stop. And read voraciously; look at how others do it. It's a skill that you have to encourage and hone; it won't just be dropped well-developed into your head.

Q&A with Niall Griffiths