Hay Festival Medals
Awarded annually since Britain’s Olympic year (2012), and crafted locally by silversmith Christopher Hamilton, the Hay Festival Medals draw inspiration from the original Olympic medal given for poetry.
The Hay Festival medals in 2020 are awarded to honour exceptional work in poetry, prose and journalism. Inua Ellams’ poetry medal celebrates his book The Half God of Rainfall, a brilliantly conceived narrative poem playing with African and Greek mythologies. The daring of the idea and the language make it a masterpiece of contemporary poetry. Lydia Cacho’s journalism medal salutes her heroic commitment to investigative journalism exposing atrocities against women and her resilience in the face of relentless persecution. And Hilary Mantel’s prose medal is for her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, a fully-imagined world, made intimately familiar. The language she finds to make history urgent and vital, and the exquisite attention to her characters’ deeply flawed humanity makes this one of the greatest literary achievements of our time.
HAY FESTIVAL MEDAL RECIPIENTS
2020 | Medal for Journalism – Lydia Cacho Medal for Poetry – Inua Ellams Medal for Prose – Hilary Mantel |
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2019 | Medal for Journalism – Carole Cadwalladr Medal for Poetry – Julia Donaldson Medal for Illustration – Axel Scheffler Medal for Fiction – Eric Vuillard
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2018 | Medal for Prose – Margaret Atwood Medal for Poetry – Evelyn Schlag Medal for Illustration – Jackie Morris
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2017 | Medal for Drama – Daniel Morden Medal for Prose – Philippe Sands Medal for Fiction – Cressida Cowell Medal for Festivals – Ahdaf Soueif
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2016 | Medal for Drama – Gregory Doran Medal for Poetry – Gillian Clarke Medal for Prose – Janine di Giovanni Medal for Song – Laura Marling
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2015 | Medal for Drama – Alan Bennett Medal for Education – Germaine Greer Medal for Illustration – Chris Riddell Medal for Prose – Robert MacFarlane |
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2014 | Medal for Drama – Hans Rosenfeldt Medal for Prose – Karl Ove Knausgaard Medal for Illustration – Oliver Jeffers |
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2013 | Medal for Fiction – John le Carre Medal for Poetry – Owen Sheers Medal for Drama – Miranda Hart |
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2012 | Medal for Drama – Abi Morgan Medal for Poetry – Simon Armitage Medal for Prose – Jeanette Winterson |
Laura Marling receiving the Hay Festival Medal for Song
Hay Festival medals being made