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Zonia Bowen (23 April 1926 – 18 March 2024) was an English-born writer, linguist, and activist in Wales. The founder of the women's organisation Merched y Wawr, Bowen worked to promote the Welsh language and Welsh culture.
Zonia Margarita North was born in Ormesby St Margaret, Norfolk, England, in 1926.[1][2][3] She grew up in Heckmondwike, Yorkshire.[4][5][6]
She studied French at Bangor University in Wales during the 1940s.[4][5] While there, she began to learn Welsh for the first time, to connect with friends and neighbours.[4][5] Despite her own English background, she became passionate about the Welsh language and Welsh identity.[4][5][6]
In 1947, she married the Welsh poet Geraint Bowen.[3][4][5] They had four children; several of her grandchildren are members of the bands Plu and Y Bandana.[5]
In 1967, Zonia Bowen founded Merched y Wawr in response to officials not allowing the local Women's Institute branch, near Bala, to operate in the Welsh language.[4][5][6][7][8] The new women's organisation grew to a national one that continues to this day.[6]
Bowen served as the organisation's first national secretary, and as the founding editor of its Y Wawr magazine, which she ran for six years.[2][4] During her time with the group, she organised several international trips for its members, including to the Soviet Union in 1975.[2]
She resigned as honorary president in 1976, severing ties with Merched y Wawr, because she had envisioned it as a secular, nondenominational organisation open to everyone, but others wanted to incorporate Christianity into its activities.[4][5][6]
As a child, Bowen had been raised without religion.[5] She was involved with the Wales Humanists, including as onetime secretary of the organisation's council, though she did not explicitly label herself as a humanist, preferring "freethinker" or no label at all.[4][5]
Bowen was also prominently involved in the Madryn campaign, which opposed the dumping of nuclear waste in Wales.[2][4]
In addition to French and Welsh, Bowen also studied Breton, and she went on to publish the first Welsh-language Breton textbook.[2][4][9] She also published a Welsh-language book for children about humanism.[5] In 1991, she co-wrote a seminal history of the Gorsedd of Bards with her husband.[5][10]
She published an autobiography, Dy bobl di fydd fy mhobl i, in 2015.[4][5]
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