Hay-on-Wye festival sells out
The Independent reports that the Hay-on-Wye literary festival has sold out.
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.”
