Suddenly it’s all happening on the shores of the Solway. A writing weekend in Allonby (see our Events pages), a festival in Bowness (on Solway, not Windermere), and now novelist and scientist Ann Lingard’s doing guided walks in the footsteps of Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

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If you’re putting together your summer reading list, there’s a bumber crop of new titles from Cumbrian writers. Four poetry collections, two novels, and a travel book with a difference are off the presses, on the shelves, and bracing their spines for your attention.

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After making the longlist of ten last month, Carlisle poet Jacob Polley’s first novel, Talk of the Town, has gone through to the final shortlist of three for the 2010 Desmond Elliott Prize. The winner will be announced on 23 June at an award event at Fortnum & Mason.

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… was win the Anne Pierson Award for Young Writers in Cumbria for the second time in three years, when praise and prizes were handed out at the awards ceremony at the Brewery Arts Centre on 21 April. Penrith teenager Katie Hale won the award in 2008 and was a runner-up last year.

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Young writers from all over the county gathered at Carlisle Library on Monday (26 April) as the winner of the 2010 Cumbria section of the CWA Young Crime Writers’ Competition was revealed. The winner was Kate Moloney, 15, whose story A Darker Shade of Crimson will now go on to the national stage of judging. She must wait until Crime Fiction Week (14 – 20 June) for the announcement of the national winner. Read more …