When Kapka Kassabova was a child, the border zone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece was rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, so it swarmed with soldiers, spies and fugitives.
In her award-winning book Border Kassabova sets out on a journey to meet the people of this triple border – Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, and the latest wave of refugees fleeing conflict further afield.
At Hay Festival, Kassabova took audience through that journey of a region that has been shaped by its own past migration crises, by communism, by two world wars, by the Ottoman Empire and by the ancient legacy of myths and legends.
"It's not lost of me that Hay Festival sits on a border and if there have to still be borders in this world, I wish more of them were like Hay" she said.