Hay Festival RSS

The sun is beginning to shine consistently and the urge to spend your days sitting in the grass reading a good book is growing. It can mean nothing else  ‒ the countdown to Hay Festival 2022 has begun. And those deckchairs are calling us!  The iconic literary festival situated in the 'book town', Hay-on-Wye, returns with a full in-person programme, since before the pandemic. We are super excited to be back and Parthian have a couple of events that you can go see and enjoy!  #HayFestival2022  Monday 30th May at 7pm ‒ Max Boyce talks to Carolyn Hitt  After a sell-out book tour...

This week in Nation.Cymru, Parthian Director Richard Davies published a piece on how Hay has been engaging (or not engaging) with Welsh literature and writers in recent years - and whether it's still held 'in' Wales at all...   Extracts below - for the full read, go to Nation.Cymru.   Writers love being invited to Hay. You’re part of the club, sales will rocket into double figures, you get invited into the Green room and get a free coffee, a chance to smile flirtatiously at Germaine Greer and listen to Stephen Fry talk about his bunions. You used to get paid in...

As much as I love talking about myself, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about someone else for a change. Rhys Owain Williams is the first of several writers who are going to be contributing in some way or another to this blog.

I first met Rhys a couple of years ago at the Hay Festival. We were both part of the Hay Writers at Work Scheme, this amazing project that sees a group of writers from Wales sent to the festival for 13 days to write, network and, basically, develop professionally.

I liked Rhys straight away. He was a late recruit, joining up with us on the second year of the scheme, but he easily slotted into our group. We drank beer. Lots of beer. We attended events and workshops with famous writers and agents. We listened to each other’s poetry. We sat outside in the Green Room and talked about our collections which were, at this point, just fragmented words in various notepads, half formed ideas in our heads, their front covers like adverts for holidays we could only imagine going on.

I mostly liked Rhys because we had the same sense of humour. He’d share funny stories about the B&B he was staying at and the old lady who ran it, Betty, describing their early morning conversations, her ornaments and her concern for his well-being during his stay. I imagined him sneaking back in the middle of the night, creeping up Betty's stairs like a burglar after one of our group’s drinking sessions at The Old Electric Shop, like Betty was his Nan or something and he didn’t want to disappoint her with his antics.

As well as having a talent for befriending old ladies and drinking beer, Rhys is also a fantastic poet. The nice part about our friendship is that those conversations in the Green Room about our first poetry collections became a reality. We were both offered publishing contracts, at the same time, by the same publisher.

Rhys’ collection is different to mine though, in that he uses a lot of styles and poetic devices. He’s a poet who has clearly worked on his craft for years and that shows – every word counts, every word has been thought out, making an extremely moving and accomplished debut collection.

I’m really looking forward to touring with our books. It’s exciting having a new book out anyway but it’s even better being able to share the journey with someone I know. Rhys has his own launch in Swansea tomorrow (Friday 14 September).

You can buy his book That Lone Ship HERE.

I asked him some questions.

Over and out. X

the last polar bear on earth by Rhian Elizabeth is available from our online shop for £8 and free P&P (UK)