A special artwork created by Jackie Morris live during Hay Festival Digital last Spring will be sold alongside a limited edition range of prints to raise funds for Hay Festival Foundation next month.
The online print sale will begin Monday 2 November at hayfestival.org/shop on a first come, first served basis, coinciding with the release of the Hay Festival Digital Winter Weekend programme. Meanwhile, the original painting will be sold on jackiemorris.co.uk.
The painting, created during a special “Painting The Lost Words” event at Hay Festival Digital last May, features a majestic hare leaping across the moon, conjured in Morris’ Pembrokeshire studio.
Produced by Aquarelle, the run of 145 prints will feature 50 premium versions with a hand applied “gold” leaf background along with 95 standard giclée prints. All prints will be signed by Jackie Morris, numbered in pencil and produced on 100% cotton rag fine art paper.
Morris is an internationally best-selling illustrator, artist and author of over 40 children’s books. In 2016 she was shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for Something About a Bear and she won the prize in 2019 for the modern classic, The Lost Words, which was Hay Festival Book of the Year in 2017.
Gareth Howell-Jones, bookshop manager at Hay Festival, said: “We are enormously grateful to Jackie Morris for donating these prints to raise funds for Hay Festival Foundation. Her work is a favourite of festivalgoers and we are delighted to offer them a chance to purchase a special piece of their own, just in time for Christmas.”
Morris said: “Few people see the work Hay Festival does in schools, libraries and prisons. This work, bringing books to so many, is why I am pleased to support Hay Festival by donating the prints and the original artwork to raise money for them. It’s an inclusive festival, so rich in its diversity and gives a platform to new voices and old, encouraging young writers to find their voices, young illustrators to blossom. It’s my way of saying thank you.”
Now in its 21st year, Hay Festival Digital Winter Weekend will be streamed live from Hay-on-Wye, kicking off the holiday season from the town of books in all its festive glory with a star-studded line-up of speakers and performers, 26-29 November.
While the full line-up will be unveiled on 2 November, recent Festival speakers have included writers Bernardine Evaristo, Matt Haig, Mererid Hopwood, and Horatio Clare; campaigners and journalists James O’Brien, Afua Hirsch, Helena Kennedy and Gina Miller; comedians Matt Lucas, Russell Kane and Shazia Mirza; broadcasters Monty Don, Cerys Matthews, Kate Humble and the “Queen of Shops” Mary Portas; and Jackie Morris herself.
The Festival will also once again draw on public nominations to crown the Hay Festival Book of the Year 2020, following previous wins for Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five in 2019, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s Inventing Ourselves in 2018 and The Lost Words by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane in 2017.
Novelist and Festival regular Jeanette Winterson said: “It’s the time of year we need some internal sunshine and that’s what this is. It’s a place where there’s light and there’s warmth and a lot of fun.”
Hay Festival Digital Winter Weekend is supported by the Festival’s lead sponsors Visit Wales and Baillie Gifford and builds on the success of recent digital Hay Festival editions in the UK, Mexico and Croatia, following the year’s earlier iterations in the UAE, Colombia and Spain.
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