It was a great pleasure to take part in this year’s On Land’s Edge Festival – we are so lucky to have such a variety of arts’ events gathered together in Fishguard.

And it was a particular delight to be involved in Literature Sunday, along with some top-rate writers. After all, Sophie Mackintosh has featured in Granta’s list of Best Young Novelists, and has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. It was a definite coup for the festival to arrange for her to lead this event and a thrill for me to appear at the same venue!

After Sophie’s interview with Sue Lewis, Jon Gower spoke with Mike Lewis – a very entertaining talk, ranging from seabirds, to R.S Thomas, to bikers and whales. A highlight of this – for me – was when he read a piece from his new book ‘The Turning Tide’, about the filming of ‘Moby Dick’ in Fishguard, with the model of the whale escaping into the Irish Sea. My story, ‘Whale Watching’ was a fictional account of the same subject, but the research I did for that seemed to suggest it never really happened – the story was made up for publicity purposes. As it turned out, one of the audience members was Newport resident, author and actor John Harries, who was actually there at the time, and his account confirms the truth of the tale, with part of the model ending up in a garage in Dinas…. 

Happening to have a couple of copies of my short story collection, ‘Trouble Crossing the Bridge’ which contains ‘Whale Watching’ with me, I decided to give one to John, so he could read the story.

I hope he likes it.

A case of stories within stories within stories…!

And then it was my turn to be interviewed by Mike Ponsford, along with Valerie Norris, who has written a novel set in this area – quite different in many ways from ‘things found on the mountain’, which I was discussing. But Mike, a skilled interviewer, found links between them and asked interesting questions about both.

There was plenty of time for questions from the audience, too, of which there were quite a few. Afterwards, it was particularly lovely to meet some of those who had already read the book, and who said how much they liked it and that they were going to recommend it to their various book clubs – which is a lovely thing to hear.

Many thanks to Pepper’s for hosting, Patrick Thomas of Theatr Gwaun, for arranging it all, and to Mike! And to all those who came along.