Novelist and short story writer Menna Gallie (1919 - 1990) was born at Ystradgynlais. Formerly an English teacher, she travelled widely in Europe and North America, but lived at Newport, Pembrokeshire, after her husband's retirement from the Chair of Political Science at Cambridge University. She published her first novel in 1959, which was followed by several others, as well as short stories and a translation of Caradog Prichard's novel Un Nos Ola Leuad (1960) under the title Full Moon (1973). Information taken from Meic Stephens' New Companion to the Literature of Wales (University of Wales Press, 1998)