Dusk: Stories and Poems from Solstice Shorts Festival 2017
On 21st December 2017, the shortest day of the year, 18stories and28t poems celebrating DUSK were read live on twelve sites, in a wave of words across the UK. Starting in Ellon in Aberdeenshire at 17:07, the festival raced over the country at the speed of dark, with overlapping events taking place in Inverness, Carlisle, Holyhead, Lancaster, Rossendale, Nottingham, Birmingham, Greenwich, Kelston, and Warkleigh, ending in Redruth in Cornwall as full dark fell at 18:20. This is the perfect, atmospheric memento of one of the most imaginative, forward-thinking festivals in recent history: a nation’s length celebration of the dying of the light at the turning point of winter. Patrick Gale Dusk lends itself to the anxiety that darkness brings, and there is a fair smattering of edge-of-horror, chills-down-the-spine and keeping-the-lights-on, but there is also humour and the in-between-ness of the cusp of day, when anything is possible. from David Hartley, David Mathews, Rob Schofield, Samuel Wright, Rosalind Stopps, Penny Pepper, Rob Walton, Helen Slavin, Lucy Grace, Jackie Taylor, Sherry Morris, Pippa Gladhill, Alex Reece Abbott, Fiona Salter, Cath Bore, Kirsty Fox, Katerina Watson, Math Jones, Mandy Macdonald, Katie Evans, Joy Howard, Jane Aldous, , Eileen Carney Hulme, Alice Tarbuck, Gabrielle Choo, Kate Wise, Alannah Egan, Alison Lock, Aziz Dixon, Ness Owen, Jeremy Dixon, Lindsay Reid, Sue Birchenough, Nigel Hutchinson, Sue Johnson, John Bevan, John Richardson, Kelly Davis, Katy Lee, Laila Sumpton, Michelle Penn, Bridie Toft, Nicholas McGaughey, Lisa Kelly, Martyn Crucefix, Elizabeth Parker, Carl Griffin