Festival organiser honoured

Published: 13 June 2021
Reporter: David Upton

Words by the Water Festival in Keswick

Kay Dunbar, founder of the Ways With Words Literature Festivals organisation which runs the festival in Keswick, has been recognised with an MBE for ‘Services to Literature’ in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Kay, along with husband Stephen Bristow, started running festivals in the summer of 1992 at Dartington Hall in Devon—where Kay lives—and included such literary luminaries as Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), Mary Wesley and Melvyn Bragg (now president of Words by the Water in Cumbria).

Over subsequent years, she initiated festivals and writing courses in Suffolk, Cumbria, London, York, Bath, Italy and France.

Having stepped back from organisation of the festivals, partly due to health considerations, Kay continues to take a close interest in the development of the business, now under the control of managing director Leah Varnell.

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