Some authors, it seems, are falling out of love with the Hay Festival, including sometimes children's author Terence Blacker:
Leading the charge is the novelist Margaret Drabble, who attended the first festival in 1988 but has vowed never to return. The author of 17 novels, two biographies, a television play and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize told The Independent on Sunday it had become too "celebrity conscious". "It's a pity," she said. "The whole thing has become a celebrity festival, not an author's festival. Of course there are some very fine writers there this year. But the whole thing of festivals has become about book sales and marketing, nothing to do with meeting readers. They argue that if they're selling your book then you don't get a fee. But I like to get a fee unless I choose to be a patron or a friend which I am to one or two small festivals. I don't want ?100K and I don't see why Bill Clinton did, and he's not an author." The author Terence Blacker, who has written numerous novels, said he was "bemused" by the reaction he received when he suggested giving a reading of his biography of the theatre impresario and author Willie Donaldson. "I've loved Hay in the past, as performer and audience," he said, "but this year my new biography of Willie Donaldson was rejected on the grounds that a reading from it could only work if it was 'glammed up a bit' - direct quote - with celebrity readers. I can't help feeling that something about the festival may have changed in some way and I'm sad that I'll never be glam enough for it."
Leave a comment