Hafina Clwyd (1 July 1936 – 14 March 2011) was a Welsh educator, writer and journalist. She had a weekly column in the Western Mail.[1]
Mair Hafina Clwyd Jones was born at Gwyddelwern, and raised on a farm at Llandyrnog. Her family were Welsh speakers. She trained to be a teacher at Bangor Normal College.[2]
Clwyd moved to London at age 21, to work as a teacher. There she co-founded a Welsh literary club, and was an officer of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion.
After returning to Wales in the late 1970s, she edited a community newspaper in Ruthin (Y Bedol) and a national weekly newspaper, Y Faner. She was on the Ruthin town council from 1999 until the year she died, and served a term as mayor of the town (2008–2009).[3] She was recognized with an honorary fellowship at Bangor University in 2005, "for services to journalism."[4]
Clwyd published eleven books, mainly essay collections, including Clichau yn y Glaw (1973),[5] Defaid yn Chwerthin (1980), Clust y Wenci (1997) and Prynu Lein Ddillad (2009)[6] Her works also included an edition of her own diaries from young womanhood, Buwch ar y Lein (1987), an autobiography, Merch Morfydd (1987), and a local history, Pobol sy'n Cyfri (2001). She also edited Welsh Family History: A Guide to Research. Her last book, Mynd i'r Gwrych: Dyddiaduron, 1993–1999 (2011) was published posthumously.[7]
Clwyd married fellow teacher Clifford Coppack as her second husband in 1971. She was widowed in 1997. Hafina Clwyd died in 2011, age 74, from melanoma.[8]