Penzance Literary Festival

The first-ever Penzance Literary Festival came to a triumphant conclusion on Sunday, August 22nd. With a varied programme of more than 40 events, it has been hailed by visitors and contributors alike as a resounding success. And as more than one person put it, it has been a tremendous buzz!

Uniquely friendly and inclusive

Our Festival seems to have had a different tone from others. We didn’t spend money parachuting in celebrities from London. We have distinguished authors of our own down here, and they muck in communally with the rest of us. None of our speakers asked for payment, and nor did any of our venues, so we were able to keep prices down to a rock-bottom level: £2, with £1  concessions (and no charge at all for events at the Public Library). The number of people who paid at the concessionary rate – approaching 1 in 3 – shows that attendees came from a wide range of income groups. Our venues were small (maximum 30), which made for an intimate and relaxed atmosphere. And as well as talks we had many sessions that took the form of workshops and conversations between authors in which the audience joined in.

Also contributing to the ‘community feel’ was the ‘Big Read’. We aimed to get everyone in town reading and talking about Patrick Gale’s book, Notes from an Exhibition, which is set in Penzance. The Public Library did us proud, getting in 100 copies, which flew off the shelves, and our local bookshop – BooksPlus – sold a good few copies too. And we organised four ‘one-off’ reading groups where readers came to exchange and discuss their impressions of it and their feelings about it. We also held a Literary Lunch at the Penzance Arts Club, where Patrick talked about how he came to write the book and answered questions about it.

We were operating on a shoestring (our ‘grant aid’ comprised £400 from Cyprus Well and £100 from the Hypatia Trust), and so had to run a very tight ship, but our organization too has been communal and relaxed. We haven’t had a ‘director’; and we haven’t set up a ponderous, self-important committee. We’ve been a team of people, every one of whom was prepared to take responsibility when they saw that something needed doing. We think we’ve shown that individual creative spirits can join together to produce a wonderful community enterprise.

We live in a part of the world where every town and village has its annual show, fair or festival, and we feel we’ve organised a get-together for the ‘literary village’ of West Cornwall. The enthusiastic response we’ve received encourages us to make it an annual event.

West Cornwall – an area with a flourishing literary life

Penzance is the urban centre of West Cornwall. As everyone knows, it is a small, coastal, characterful, end-of-the-line town. Less well-known is the fact that it and the surrounding area have a remarkably rich and flourishing literary life. Dozens of writers live in Penzance and in the neighbouring small towns and villages, while in Penzance alone there are more than 25 reading groups. There are unique book collections in Penzance Public Library, Trevelyan House (home of the Hypatia Trust) and especially the Morrab Library, one of only 19 independent libraries in the UK, which has been acquiring book collections since 1818. We were pleased to learn that the tours of the premises which the Morrab Library organised during the Festival resulted in 7 new members joining.

Help us design next year’s Festival

Community involvement needn’t only take the form of turning up to Festival events. There’s every reason for local people to play a part in designing the Festival too. So we are inviting everyone to let us have their suggestions as to what next year’s Festival might include. We want to cover all kinds of writing, for all groups within the community – we didn’t do anything specifically for teenagers this year – and for all purposes. The use of creative writing to promote health and well-being, for example, is in our sights. If you have ideas, or if you’d like to take part, please send an email to:  info.@.pz-litfest.org.uk. (But don’t leave spaces round the @!)

Next year’s Penzance Literary Festival will be held in the last week of July, running from Wednesday, July 27th to Sunday, July 31st, 2011. Keep those five days free!

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Peter Levin
Chairman, Penzance Literary Festival Association

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PS A message to visitors from ‘up-country’

As you can see, the Penzance Literary Festival is essentially a grass-roots community festival, put on by and for local people. It’s not a small-scale version of Hay-on-Wye, and it’s not designed to attract the chattering classes from London. But we aren’t precious, we aren’t parochial, we aren’t inward-looking, and we aren’t exclusive. Guests from across the Tamar will be very welcome!