“Writers can’t be on broadcast all the time. Sometimes, you need to listen.”
When Jeanette Winterson said that, I wrote it down. I wrote down a lot of what she said that morning. She was in fine form. It was like standing in front of a fire hose.
I was one of ten Welsh writers selected for this year’s cohort of the Hay Festival Writers at Work Programme, a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent. Emerging is a famously tricky word. It is better than young as writers begin to publish at different ages, and emerging does suggest a process beyond that first debut, but it is somewhat problematic that a writer can be described as emerging for years. This year, the call-out of applications to the Writers at Work Programme suggested that emerging might mean early-to-mid career, and the selected cohort represented the wide diversity in Welsh writing today. It was such a privilege to be selected and spend focused time with these writers, sharing the inspiring, immersive experience that is one of the biggest literary festivals in the world.
For the ten days, we were treated to a full schedule of main programme events, private seminars, and masterclasses, put together by Tiffany Murray, an author herself and Hay Festival International Fellow. We were also each given ten additional tickets so that we could seek out conversations and events that connected with our own work and interests. We had our own workspace, a much-coveted private tent in the middle of the Festival site, where our seminars and masterclasses were held, and established writers like Jeanette Winterson, generously gave us their time and shared their work and experience, generously treating us not as students but colleagues. I filled my notebook with the things they said.
Their approaches to writing were so varied and even contradictory, and I found that both validating and freeing. Every writer’s method was personal. Every book was an individual expression, and the writer needed to work out how to write that book as truly, authentically and personally as possible. There is no wrong way as long as you bring yourself to the page.
We were also visited by past participants of the programme who spoke with us about how they returned home with new courage for their work and, now, a few weeks post-Hay, it rings true. I took a while to catch up on sleep and get back into the rhythms of home, but I’m back at my desk now and I feel open to writing in new ways and grateful for the gift of that experience.
In Ancient Greece, there was a practice of bi-directional writing. Lines of text carved in stone would alternate direction so that one line would be read left to right, and the following right to left with the letters mirrored. A there-and-back kind of writing that calls to mind Tolkien’s ambidextrous elven texts. The term for this writing is boustrophedon- which comes oxand turn, suggesting the image of an ox ploughing a field, first in one direction and then the other. Looking back on my Hay Festival experiences feels like this. I return to my notebooks but what I read feels changed from when I wrote it down. Winterson’s words echo differently for me now after having listened Sarah Perry and Tom Bullough and Viv Groskop and Colm Toibin. Owen Sheers’ thoughts about the different engines of storytelling connect with Hollie McNish’s assertion that “everything is made of stories,” and Jackie Kay’s push towards discovering questions mirrors Andrew O’Hagan as he leans into improvability.
I listen again. I read through my notebook and share these small glimpses, these remembered words, and I feel returned – there-and-back and changed – to my desk and my work and I find the courage to write more.
Writers at Work at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye is supported by Literature Wales, funded by Arts Council of Wales.
Katie Munnik is a novelist and poet living in Cardiff. Her recent book, The Aerialists, was Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month in April 2023.