Bryn Glas Books
Publishing on the edge: the transformative power of books
Change takes place on the margins which is why, at Bryn Glas Books, we aspire to PUBLISHING ON THE EDGE. If you’re looking for comfort, curling up with a book may be an enticing idea. But books can also take us outside our comfort-zones and change how we view the world. Anyone who’s had the pleasure of immersing themselves in a novel knows the power of well-crafted story-telling. We may emerge inspired or disturbed. We may experience an epiphany moment and see more clearly where we only glimpsed dimly before. It’s this transformative power that Bryn Glas Books seeks to uphold, along with the simple pleasure of fine writing.
Our writers are radical thinkers. In his Isle Fincara Trilogy A G Rivett explores ideas that are ancient but challenge the mainstream view. In Vu Kenneth Sinclair garners the riches of twenty centuries but breaks ground with a new form. Bryn Glas Books is a small independent publisher based in Wales that seeks new vision while connecting with timeless values. This awareness and this aspiration underlie all the books we publish through our Pantolwen Press imprint.
Photographs of people reading books. Clockwise from top left, pictures by Aaron Burden, Christin Hume, Jilbert Ibrahimi and Seven Shooter. Available on Unsplash.
PUBLISHING ON THE EDGE through our Pantolwen Press imprint
BLOG POSTS stimulated by books and other media by Gillian Paschkes-Bell
Fantasy Fiction and Reality
Guest post by author, A G Rivett. Fantasy, Sci Fi and Speculative Fiction Some see a disconnect between Fantasy Fiction and Reality. But is there, really? In a recent piece in The Author, Nadia Attia…
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Kenneth Sinclair’s VU – Groundbreaking Experimental Fiction
Kenneth Sinclair’s debut novel, VU, is a groundbreaking work of experimental fiction. Is it, indeed, a novel – or a new form entirely? Reviewing for the Historical Novel Society, Susie Helme exclaims, I’ve never seen…
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Staying in Chartres
A visit to Chartres Last October, we were staying in Chartres. Chartres holds so much history, all the way back to the pre-Christian cult that once flourished there, centered on a Virgin and Child. There’s…
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Looking across the quad to Darlington's Great Hall
How to use history
The Historical Novel Society chose a venue steeped in over a thousand years of history for its 2024 conference, held at the Dartington Estate in Devon. We met and mingled in medieval buildings where once…
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Film poster
This Being Human – Panʼs Labyrinth
What is it about Spanish culture that enables their film-makers to create such masterly evocations of other-worldly states? We recently watched Panʼs Labyrinth (El laborinto del fauno), the award-winning 2006 film by Guillermo del Toro that opens…
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St Ives. Photo by Zed-Zacovics on Unsplash
Truth and Priorities: The Serpentine Cave
The quest for truth Peeling away assumptions that blind us to our true priorities is a central motif for Jill Paton Walsh in her 1997 novel, The Serpentine Cave. Honesty in business dealings… The gradual realisation…
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Cave explorer looking at flowstone formations by Cheile Cutler, curated by Adrian Mag on Unsplash
Initiation Rites – The Womb of the Mountain
Several readers of The Priestʼs Wife have commented on the passage in which Morag, the protagonist, descends to a cave deep in a mountain and there spends three days and nights in darkness. The Priestʼs Wife is…
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Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash
Sycamore Gap
This Easter, we heard Newcastleʼs Bishop Helen-Ann give the Good Friday meditation on BBC Radio 4: reflections arising from the felling of the tree at the Sycamore Gap which, for three hundred years, grew beside…
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Epona is always seen with horses
World’s End
A late summerʼs evening. The doors thrown wide, light and warmth attracting some members of the local insect population to join us. A full auditorium, listening to the broadcaster and storyteller, Euros Lewis, taking us…
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New light kindled in the dark of the tree
A Sense of Otherness
This January, the Bryn Glas Blog has a guest post from A G Rivett, who writes about the sense of Otherness that is an essential part of being human. How that is conveyed – or not…
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Heatherfield on The Park at Findhorn
How I Became a Publisher – Nature and Spirit and Us
Since January I’ve aimed to write a post a month on the Bryn Glas Blog and for ten twelfths of the year I succeeded. Intense activity around the time of the publication of The Priestʼs…
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First edition cover
An Unknown Woman
This post is the second of my series about women who, against the odds, arrive at some form of emancipation. (My first post on this theme was: The Godmother—Can You be Too Honest?) I like…
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Jacket design
Things Fall Apart
“Read this,” said a friend. “Itʼs different.” For the first time I was to be transported to the world of an African village by a writer whose words felt authentic. Chinua Achebeʼs 1958 novel,…
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Earth, Air, Fire and Water on Penbryn Beach
Reading The Seaborne with Earth, Air, Fire and Water
Reading The Seaborne with Earth, Air, Fire, Water, the four elements of ancient times, offers a fertile way of reflecting on this first book of A G Rivett’s Isle Fincara Trilogy. The Ancient Elements We…
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Editor and Author at the Logie Steading Bookshop
The Seaborne by A G Rivett – the inside story
Listening to the BBC Radio 4 version of Haydn Middleton’s novella, The Ballad of Syd and Morgan (by Roger James Elsgood, broadcast on May 20th 2023), I heard Morgan (E M Forster) explain to his…
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Old Street Publishing 2019 edition
The Godmother – Can you be too honest?
With The Godmother, I begin a short series of occasional blog posts on novels about women who, against the odds, arrive at some form of emancipation. What form that takes depends, not only on the…
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Eric, taken by himself
RIP dear Eric
It was on the first anniversary of the start of the present Ukraine war, a day when Jupiter and Venus – Joy and Love – were conjunct, that a small gathering of family and friends…
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Stock photo on Unsplash
Where’s Frodo?
This month, it will be a year since the war on Ukraine began. I mark this by going back to an essay written by a Russian and published in The Guardian on 27 February 2022.…
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Glastonbury tor - drone picture on Unsplash
“Godʼs back!”
“Godʼs back!” I quote Tim Freke, sharing the current cutting edge of his philosophy at a wonderful New Year retreat Andrew and I have just attended where he lives in Glastonbury. (Andrew is my husband.…
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Stock photo
Heading for the Light
I was once told that spiritual traditions tend to place too much emphasis on Light, since Darkness is just as important in getting any creative process going – as anyone who has ever planted a…
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Detail from cover: woodcut by Andrew Davidson
Losing the Ego – thoughts arising from Neil Ansell’s ‘Deep Country’
Iʼm part of a book club, and some weeks ago another member was offering around a few books she wanted to move on. The one that called to me was Deep Country by Neil Ansell.…
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Programme notes cover
Operation Julie – How to Change Your Mind
We went to see Operation Julie, the new rock musical from Theatr Na nÓg that premiered in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, toured to Brecon, and then to the Lyric at Carmarthen, which is where we…
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James Fox looks at an Egyptian figurine
Nature and Us
In this first post of the Bryn Glas Blog I want to begin with the big picture and describe how I feel about our present global situation. And Iʼd like to begin as I intend…
Read PostQuote from VU by Kenneth Sinclair
Time to begin, she said.
And so that night, the black hulls of the Greeks already on the blue Aegean, bound for Troy. The long sea oars drip diamond drops that flash in the noonday sun. In all beginnings there is a magic force.