The Gwent Levels line the north shore of the Severn Estuary in South Wales: Chepstow at their head; their more famous cousin, the Somerset Levels, across the water; the Welsh capital, Cardiff at their feet. You could waste an hour crossing the Levels by motorway. Or brush aside the journey by train. But writer Marsha O'Mahony has chosen the slow route of foreshore, footpath, and country lane. Over the course of two years, she meandered from village to village collecting conversations and anecdotes as she went. The result is a remarkable oral and social history of this unique landscape and the people who live there.

Marsha O'Mahony is a writer, journalist and oral historian from Hereford. Her work includes River Voices an oral history of the river Wye; writing and researching a series of films about Herefordshire (funded by HLF). She has been a contributing researcher, writer and interviewer for Herefordshire Lore (Herefordshire oral history group) since 2005, and was a community correspondent for BBC Radio Wales for two years. She is also a playwright, with plays performed at Birmingham MAC and the Courtyard Theatre in Hereford. O'Mahony has also written for The Guardian, BBC Countryfile, Country Life, The Field, This England, Impress Magazine; her Scratch of the Hop social history of hop growing in the West Midlands was published in 2021. She has written for local and national news organisations, most recently for a New York-based lifestyle desk.