Hay Festival 2019 by ECvW
We’ve been blessed with another fantastic Hay Festival. Official photo’s in the Green Room, a larger, high-spec venue, (beautifully managed by a wonderful festival team), and an absolutely terrific, attentive, sell-out crowd!
Our audience were delighted by a wide variety of poetry, short stories and excerpts from novels. Thoughtful, humorous and descriptive pieces easily gelled alongside fictional landscapes and characters, some pieces even celebrating our 40th year – there was literally something for everyone to enjoy.
Photo by Merv Newton 2019
We were also extremely privileged to have an introduction by Hay Festival Director, Peter Florence. Describing, in his address how Hay-on-Wye is known the world over as “the town of books, but increasingly over the last 35 to 40 years, a town of writers as well.” How our community, rich in so many things is “richest in its story telling (which) is incredibly important and dear”; and that enhancing a love of “language and stories is important to who we are.”
I have to say, these wondrous words by Peter instilled a huge amount of honour and pride in each writer, and acted like a rousing call-to-(literary)-arms. I don’t think we ever performed as well as a group on that day and on that amazing Hay Festival stage.
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A huge thank you to Peter Florence and the whole team at Hay Festival for their unceasing, essential support enabling the Hay Writers and by giving us this valuable public platform on which to perform.
Finally, thank you to our audience who dodged the wind and rain for an hour and applauded in all the right places. Well done everyone!
THE HAY WRITERS 