Lancaster LitFest invites you to a special event later this month, featuring a two fascinating authors, Jenn Ashworth and Clive Parkinson, in association with The Dukes, marking the launch of Jenn’s new book, The Parallel Path.
“The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking The North” (tickets available from The Dukes here) will take place on Wednesday 23rd July at 7.00pm at The Storey Lecture Theatre. In conversation with Zoe Lambert, Jenn Ashworth and Clive Parkinson 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.
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.
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 on 17th July, priced £20.00, and will be available at the launch. It’s available from all good bookshops and via bookshop.org (Affiliate Link)
“The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking The North” – Jenn Ashworth and Clive Parkinson in Conversation with Zoe Lambert, 7.00pm Wednesday 23rd July 2025 The Storey Lecture Theatre, Lancaster | Tickets available here | Special offer (save £5) – ticket and book bought in advance: £20