Tesni is a Cardiff-born author living in North Wales. She has been writing stories since she was five years old and knew she wanted to work as a novelist from the age of six. Regularly engrossed in reading at the dinner table, she needed to be prised away from her latest novel each night so that her bedroom light could be switched off.
After working in professional development for over thirty years, during which time she wrote ten non-fiction books, Tesni now writes first world war fiction. Her well researched, historically accurate stories are set on the home front in Cymru. They focus on the courage and resilience of Welsh women and returning veterans, as well as the plight and heroism of soldiers at the front. The novels are her homage to the women and men of Cymru who endured so much during that war.
Her first novel Poppies Grow on Broken Ground is endorsed by Dafydd Iwan: ‘Gripping human story … the passages on the front-line are among the best I have ever read … rich and interesting insight into the “war to end all wars”‘. Her second novel In Good Faith will be published on 11th November 2026. Firelight, No Man’s Land and At The Front follow, as sister novels.
Tesni talks engagingly about the home front in Cymru during the first world war and the themes of her novels. She was the special guest on Roy Noble’s 2025 Remembrance Sunday show on BBC Radio Wales, has given talks to U3A audiences, appeared in online readings and podcasts, and is grateful to Meirionnydd WI. Having organised a book launch for Poppies, the WI is going to organise yearly book launches for the four sister novels. Tesni is also grateful to Yr Ysgwrn, the museum home of Wales’ first world war poet Hedd Wyn, for offering to hold a book launch for Poppies.
Tesni can be contacted through her BlueSky account: @tesnibevan.bsky.social
