It’s unusual to be completely thrown by a question from the audience, but a teenager in the audience at my most recent event managed to do just that.
The event was the Hay Festival, my fellow panellists were Sally Nicholls and Anne Cassidy and the question was this: ‘If you could be any other writer, who would you be?’
‘Homer,’ said Sally, for his wonderful stories and use of language. ‘J K Rowling,’ said Anne, ‘just think of the money.’
I mumbled something about Shakespeare, but it wasn’t really true, and over the last few weeks I’ve been wondering which writer I should have picked. Anne Tyler, whose novel ‘The Accidental Tourist’ is written so beautifully that I have line-envy on every page? Antonia Forest, because then I’d know more about the Marlows, possibly my favourite family in children’s fiction? Hilary McKay for creating the Casson family, who run the Marlows a close second? Lauren Child, because I’d love to have her visual imagination? Jodie Picoult or Joanna Trollope, because I feel I could do what they do, but then I wouldn’t have to do it and I’d have all their royalties.
No. The answer, I realised was simple. I write because I like to create my own stories. I don’t want to write other people’s books or plays, even if they are more lucrative than mine, win more awards, are better written. I don’t want to be another writer, is what I should have said. I just want to work on being an even better version of me.
How about you? Is there an author you’d like to be?
By Kate Farquhar-Thomson
It was down to the trustworthy sat nav that I arrived safe and sound at Hay Festival this year; torrential downpours meant that navigating was tougher than usual and being told where to go, and when, was more than helpful.
Despite the wet and muddy conditions that met me at Hay, and stayed with me throughout the week, the enthusiasm of the crowd never dwindled. Nothing, it seems, keeps a book lover away from their passion to hear, meet, and have their book signed by their favourite author. But let’s not ignore the fact that festival-goers at Hay not only support their favourite authors, they also relish hearing and discovering new ones.
My working holiday centres on our very own creators of text, our very own exponents of knowledge, our very own Oxford authors! Here I will endeavour to distil just some of the events I was privileged to attend in the call of duty!
Peter Atkins was an Oxford Professor of Chemistry and fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford until his retirement in 2007 – many of us, including myself, studied his excellent text-books at ‘A’ level and at university. What Peter Atkins does so well is make science accessible for everyone and none less so than an attentive Hay audience. Peter puts chemistry right at the heart of science. ‘Chemistry has rendered a service to civilization’ Atkins says ‘it contributes to the cultural infrastructure of the world’. And thereon he took us through just nine things we needed to know to ‘get’ chemistry.
Ian Goldin’s event on Is The Planet Full? addressed global issues that are affecting, and will affect, our planet. So, is the planet full? Well, the Telegraph tent for his talk certainly was! Goldin, whose lime green sweater brought a welcome brightness to the stage, is Professor of Globalisation and Development and Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. His words brought clarity and insight: “politics shapes the answer to this question,” said Goldin.
Hay mixes the young with the old and academics with us mere mortals, and what we publishers call the ‘trade’ authors with the more ‘academic’ types. This was demonstrated aptly by Paul Cartledge who right from the start referenced an earlier talk he attended by James Holland. Cartledge is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at University of Cambridge and James (who is an ex-colleague and friend) is a member of the British Commission for Military History and the Guild of Battlefield Guides but a non-academic. The joy of Hay is that it brings everyone together. Paul Cartledge was speaking about After Thermopylae, a mere 2,500 years ago, but rather a more tricky period to illustrate through props and pictures which Holland so aptly used in his presentation.
OUP had 15 authors at The Hay Festival but the Hay Festival also had other visitors such as Chris Evans whose show was broadcast live from the festival as it was the 500 Words competition announcement and I was lucky enough to be there.
So what does Hay mean to me? It’s a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with heroes in literature and culture, as well as academia. It’s a week of friends, colleagues, and drinking champagne with Stephen Fry whilst discussing tennis with John Bercow – and wearing wellies every day!
Kate Farquhar-Thomson is Head of Publicity at OUP in Oxford.
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Image credits: Stephen Fry, Ian Goldin, and 500 Words competition at the Hay Festival. Photos by Kate Farquhar-Thomson: do not reproduce without permission.
The post Post-Hay Festival blues appeared first on OUPblog.
A couple of weeks ago I brought you a post on the Hay Festival by OUP UK’s Head of Publicity Kate Farquhar-Thomson. Today, for those of you who couldn’t make it to the Festival (like me), here are some of Kate’s photos from the few days she spent there.
The festival site from on high
Priya Gopal, author of The Indian English Novel, speaks to a festival-goer
Scientists Steve Jones and Jerry Coyne. Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True was published by OUP in the UK.
Festival-goers on site. Doesn’t it look glorious?
Simon Baron-Cohen, author of Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts, signs books.
Someday:
The Guardian Hay Festival of Literature
where they have tons of cool book events on the "programme" and {REALLY?} at least one of the days it's rainy.
Then I want to "walk" the seacoast path around Wales.
Someday.
The Hay Festival of Arts and Literature is one of the highlights of the UK literary calendar. Every year it takes place in Hay on Wye, a small village on the English-Welsh border, famed for its numerous bookshops. This year sees events from lots of big names including AC Grayling, Niall Ferguson, Ian McEwan, and Karen Armstrong. Several OUP authors are also doing events during the festival, including Anthony Julius, Ian Glynn, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, and Jerry Coyne.
OUP UK’s Head of Publicity, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, is also there, and this week will be sending her dispatches from the festival front line. Today, though, she writes about the other side of Hay.
It would be easy to make a list of the stars that I have spotted here at the Hay Festival since I arrived, or indeed the past colleagues I have worked with, but actually what strikes me more, on this visit, is what is going on outside the boundaries of the festival.
The fact is that whilst tens of thousands of people descend on this small Welsh border town for a week (or so) to mingle with politicians, models (oh yes, Jerry Hall was here!), historians, novelists and more, life around the UK’s premier ‘Book Town’ still goes on. I see tractors going about their farm business, sheep lambing and hay being made. However it is not only hay that is being made in Hay by the indigenous population. There are numerous little stalls of bric-a-brac, tea shops, cake stalls and plant sellers that have sprung up in gardens, on pavements, under tents and in driveways. The whole town embraces the festival and is keen to capitalise on it! Good for them I say. It happens but once a year and it is truly special. It is like the circus is in town… all encompassing but transient.
Some of Hay on Wye’s native residents.
Talking of circuses there is actually one in town in the grounds of Hay Castle this year. Giffords Circus, normally to be found every other year in a field just over the Hay Bridge has bedded down in the town centre this year. Within the castle, which was built in 1200, is a flat owned by Richard Booth, the self-proclaimed “King of Hay” whose eponymous bookshop stands at the centre of Hay and was the first second-hand bookshop to open here well over 40 years ago. And for the first time since I have been coming to Hay I actually met the man himself last Saturday night!
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