By Eithne Cullen
It’s been five years since Pen to Print and Write On! partnered with the Hay Festival, and it’s been a great and fruitful experience for us all. Those of us who attend are labelled as members of a “writer’s retreat” but the amount of writing we do is varied. We’re all of the opinion that reading and exercising the mind are crucial to our development as writers. The festival nurtures and nourishes us, giving us plenty of food for thought (and festival food, including the famous ice cream!). And gives us a chance to bond as a team, learn from each other and come back to our writing roles invigorated. So it’s a pleasure to use some of what we learned and what we experienced to share with you.
Of course, many writers stepped up to share their experiences.
I’d like to start by describing the festival. Entering the festival site is a bit like entering a village; there are tents and corridors, book shops (one the official bookshop where writers come to sell and sign their books, the other a huge Oxfam second-hand one); a number of stages host the different events, some extremely large others more intimate and smaller; there are food concessions and specialist stalls and outlets; this year there was a cinema tent; there are cafés and a couple of bars; there’s a dedicated family area. That’s not all, I have just given an overview – there are spaces to sit and read and enjoy the atmosphere, too.
Attending, as we do, we pre-book tickets to the various events; usually joining a queue to go and sit in the tents where panels and discussions take place, these are the areas where we can learn about their books and writers, giving context and clarity to some of the things we already know about them.
The three days of our visit fly by, with long walks over the fields (mind the sheep) between the festival site and our accommodation. There’s always laughter, chat and companionship among the Pen to Printers.
I’ve collected a few thoughts and comments from some of the people who attended this year. First, Rebecca Seaton.
Thoughts On Hay Festival 2026
‘Why haven’t I been before?’
That was my thought walking back from the Discovery Stage, wondering who I’d see next. The real question was what held me back? Time was a factor, but imposter syndrome also played a part. Was I good enough?
As I’ve recently made changes to create more writing time, that was no excuse, nor were my other worries. The team were so welcoming: we were all on an adventure together. Emboldened, I was soon giving out magazines and talking to strangers with the best of them.
Now my only question is ‘How long to wait?’
© Rebecca Seaton, 2026
Mary Walsh often says it with a poem; she did this time, too.
Hay Castle
Sitting neath the castle walls
I see the shadow of Owain Glyndwr
Rebelling, revolting and reproducing
Ensuring his soul lives on in every village
The castle now invaded
By floppy hatted tourists
With red-faced babies in carriages
Pensioners spending their children’s inheritance
Before the taxman gets it
Rebelling in their own way
© Mary L Walsh, 2026
She kindly added a description of an event she particularly enjoyed:
I went to a very interesting session with Alex Jones, Liv Little, Stephen Mangan, Kiri Pritchard-McClean and Juliet Stevenson in a celebration of their favourite books. Each of them came armed with a list of recommendations, all of them different. Alex Jones also revealed the Hay Festival Pleasure List – the ultimate list of 39 books of joyful reading. The lively discussion focussed on what it is that attracts us to reading; for some, it’s the smell of old books or the feel of a page as it is turned. For others, the story is the thing that is most important, and being able to identify with or sympathise with the characters. What came across was the fact that reading brings different feelings and emotions to different people and that the pleasure comes from losing yourself in the pages.
Here are 5 of my favourites from the list:
A Man Called Ove, Frederik Backman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follet
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
Refugee Boy, Benjamin Zephaniah
The full list can be found by following this link. Which ones are your favourites? You may want to compile your own list of recommendations and discuss them. Whatever you decide, take pleasure in the precious gift of reading.
© Mary L Walsh, 2026
Like Rebecca, Declan Cullen joined the party for the first time and says:
I very much enjoyed my visit to Hay this year with the Pen to Print group (thanks for the opportunity). I had the benefit of tickets to a number of sessions. I particularly enjoyed David Olusoga’s conversation with Sarah Churchill and Sarah Pearsall on the 250th anniversary of American Independence as I studied that period as part of my degree many years ago. I agreed with the view that “all men are created equal” was not a statement that the Founding Fathers and the current administration feel obliged to honour.
Adam Fleming’s conversations with Tim Minchin and Louise Casey gave us food for thought.
Natalie Haynes provided a new perspective on Jason And The Argonauts; and Samera Ahmed and Stuart Maconie’s conversation on The Beatles revived a desire to delve back into the vinyl collection.
© Declan Cullen, 2026
Two more of our writers share something more lyrical about the place and its effect on us all.
Firstly, from Julie:
Stepping out from Trewern into warm afternoon sunshine with a diplomacy of house martins to waft us on our way, we descend steep vacant country lanes, passing dusty ponies at rest.
An unexpected pathway appears between floral bordered stone cottages, leading to an undulating narrow footpath over the Dulas Brook into welcome shade, where birds sing uncensored. Lingering to enjoy the cool water babbling along before cascading over dark rocks merging England and Wales. Only fluid borders exist here. 
Kissing gates lead the way through traffic jams of grazing sheep and resting cattle across the Offa’s Dyke Pathway to Hay-on-Wye and another world beyond. Hay Festival.
© Julie Dexter, 2026
And another very evocative piece, from Alison;
If you are out with lanterns, looking for yourself or some other, embedded in every shade of a palette of green, there is Hay-on-Wye. The town festival speaks to the interested. Understanding and knowledge rise and falls through the power found in every book and song, expanding thought.
Mellifluous melodies stream out, imbuing imaginations with vibrancies as deep and lush as the bucolic trails of the sanguine Wye to dawdle by and ponder upon.
Then, to sleep at Cusop; Trewern lodged into the sleepy boundaries of two countries under the eternal chorus of magical birdsong.
© Alison Awbery, 2026
I hope you’ve managed to catch some of our enthusiasm and understand what we gain from the experience. I too found Tim Minchin very engaging. He seems to understand such a lot about words and ideas, narratives and opinions. In case you’re still wondering what it’s all about, I’d like to give him the last word, spoken at Hay, of course.
Art is what humans do to try to express what it is to be human for the sake of other humans.
*****
Image of Hay Festival Tent (c) Adam Tatton Reid
Issue 28 of Write On! OUT NOW
