Last weekend the first Dartmoor Edge Literary Fest was staged at the Clay Factory in Ivybridge.

It’s co-organiser Alison Huntingford who described how the event came about:

“I run the South Hams Authors Network which is a local group, set up about a year ago, which aims to promote and market local authors and give them all the encouragement they need. The event was my idea with Jamila Hanan from Artmoor Haven who works from the Clay Factory.” She continued: “We tried to get our local authors into other literary festivals but they weren’t very interested to be honest so Jamila and I have been working for the past six months to get this together along with Cluna Donnelly who is involved with the children’s side of it.”

Alison herself is an author herself who writes historical fiction based on her own family history and she gave one one the talks at the festival with tips on using census records, birth, marriage and death records as well as how to bring those characters to live to create a work of fiction. She explained: “I’ve had two full-length novels out so far, a short novella and I’ve done a few short stories as well.”

She describes her personal highlights: “Having TV and radio presenter Justin Leigh to open the festival for us.  He gave a very entertaining talk which everyone enjoyed.  Other smaller highlights included people standing up at the open mic and reading out their own work for the first time in their lives.  It gave everyone an opportunity to be involved.

Would she like to see some more non-fiction next year? “Yes, absolutely, although we did have several non-fiction based workshops during the weekend including Biku Ghosh – Tell and Script your own Story About Living with Disability, and Liz Scott – Unleashing the Voice of Women.”

She hopes the event will return again next year and maybe include some different genres. She would also like to encourage more help from local colleges to help get more young adults involved. Alison said: “We’ve been pretty much fully booked with about 100 on the Saturday and slightly fewer on the Sunday. Everyone’s been encouraging and enthusiastic. It would be lovely to make it an annual event.”