LITFEST: The Parallel Path

Litfest is delighted to announce a very special event to celebrate the launch of Lancaster writer Jenn Ashworth’s brilliant new book.

On Wednesday 27 July at 7pm, for one night only in The Storey Lancaster, Jenn Ashworth and Clive Parkinson will together explore Jenn’s account of walking the Wainwright ‘Coast to Coast’ route from St Bees Head to Robin Hood's Bay. 

While Jenn walks in the stifling summer of 2022 and Clive makes plans for future art projects, life intervenes harshly for both of them and they find themselves on other journeys on parallel tracks. The Parallel Path is the story of a long walk across the North, of conversation conducted by letters, and a memoir that explores how artistic and creative friendships can help us encounter illness and grief.

‘Touching, thoughtful and frank – Jenn Ashworth is a wonderful writer’  David Nicholls, author of You Are Here

‘Whatever Jenn Ashworth turns her hand to, I’m there to read it’  Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing 

‘Beautifully realised and powerful’ Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings 

"Full of intelligence and wisdom, searing self-awareness and humour... Jenn Ashworth is an incredibly talented writer’ Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father

Jenn Ashworth is the author of the novels A Kind of Intimacy (2009), which won a Betty Trask Award, Cold Light (2011), The Friday Gospels (2013), Fell (2016) and Ghosted (2021), which was shortlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2019, she published a memoir-in-essays, Notes Made While Falling (Goldsmith’s Press), which was a New Statesman Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. All her fiction is published by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton. She lives in Lancashire and is a Professor of Writing at Lancaster University.

Dr. Clive Parkinson began his working life as a visual artist at the Royal Albert Hospital in Lancaster, and for seventeen years was director of Arts for Health at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has been closely involved in the development of the creative health agenda in the UK, Europe and Australia, and is the author of A Social Glue (2020), which set out Greater Manchester’s aspirations to become the UK’s first Creative Health City Region. He lives in Lancaster.

The Parallel Path by Jenn Ashworth is published by Sceptre in hardback at £20.00 and will be available at the launch.

Special offer (save £5) – ticket and book bought in advance: £20

*books purchased in advance will be available for collection at The Storey on the evening