About Pantolwen Press 


credit:Gillian Paschkes-Bell
Gillian Paschkes-Bell
Pantolwen Press is the publishing imprint of Bryn Glas Books. Its titles are distributed by the Books Council of Wales and Gardners and can be ordered through Bookspeed. They are printed, just up the road, by Gomer Press, whose outstanding experience and equipment enable them to do high quality printing to environmentally friendly standards. They are also available print-on-demand around the world. You can order through bookshops or buy direct from the Books Council of Wales, or from Amazon and other platforms.

Gillian Paschkes-Bell set up Pantolwen Press to pick up titles from the Cardiff-based publisher, Wordcatcher, after they ceased trading in 2022. Gillian wanted to make sure Wordcatcher titles she had edited got into print. Her first task was to bring out a new edition of The Seaborne  by A G Rivett, first book of the Isle Fincara Trilogy. She was editing the second book of the Trilogy, The Priestʼs Wife, when she approached Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru, the Books Council of Wales, and was delighted when they gave it a Literary Book Grant and offered to distribute Pantolwen Press titles.  Gillian had already set up the brynglasbooks.com website, to host her Bryn Glas Blog and showcase Pantolwen Press titles. 

Bryn Glas is where we are based, just near the Ceredigion town of Llandysul in the beautiful Teifi Valley. Below Bryn Glas, as in so many steep-sided valleys in this part of Wales, are the remains of a corn mill. Driven by water, perhaps the most distinctive feature of all these mills was the great dripping water-wheel. As ‘Wheel’ in Cornwall became synonymous with a mine, so ‘Olwen’ (Welsh for wheel) became the almost universal name for a mill. Pantolwen literally means 'the hollow of the wheel,' or 'the hollow of the mill.' The logo Alex Nicholas has designed for us picks up on this imagery, but takes its quirky form from the summit of the hill opposite, where footpaths and field boundaries intersect the remains of an Iron Age fort. His design brings together the two ideas, of the mill wheel and the local hilltop.