Nestled between Penzance’s 10 day Golowan Festival and the main Penzance Literary Festival is the humble but welcoming Penzance LitFest Fringe at Redwing Arts Gallery, featuring some of our wonderful authors talking about what lies beneath and beyond our beloved Cornwall.
The events were well attended by the loveliest people and our hosts were wonderfully welcoming and helpful.
A fascinating talk about the search and discovery of Holy Wells in Cornwall, with a slideshow and wonderful anecdotes about their adventures. Equipped with old and newer books about Cornish wells, Guy English and his late wife Catharine spent five years looking for all the wells and found more than twenty not previously recorded.
Their book – Holy Wells Cornwall: Odyssey & Memorial – is a wonderful account of these wells, including walks, directions, maps and photos.
Ella Walsworth-Bell, Kate Barden, Stacia Smales Hill, Stephen Baird, Catherine Leyshon and T J Dockree gave a fun talk about the wonderful inspiration Cornwall provides, and the many interpretations of ‘Beneath and Beyond’ with readings from their stories in Cornwall Beneath and Beyond.
A Scotsman with a wonderful sense of humour, David Munro talked about his new book Earthman. Set in 1962, an astronaut, missing for three years, returns to earth with a futuristic device that he hopes will prevent a nuclear holocaust and save an alien race from extinction.
Anna Slater (aka A C Miles-Smith) read from and talked about her poignant collection of poems, chronicling significant Cornish events.
Redwing Gallery is a not-for-profit social enterprise representing art and artists working outside the mainstream commercial art world. It has evolved into a community space where people meet for group activities, social support, sharing information and much more. Their vegan cafe is part of this hub, serving plant-based food and drink and supporting local suppliers and fair trade.
Their community projects include helping support local wildlife, a housing co-operative and helping reduce food waste with their community larder. They also work with local supermarkets and Gleaning Network Cornwall to redistribute excess food to anyone who can use it.
If the organization makes any surplus, it is reinvested for the benefit of the community.
