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The Hay Festival, which opens later this week (Thursday 25th May) for its 30th year, is to release a book of Hay Festival Conversations: Thirty Conversations for Thirty Years to mark the anniversary.
The paperback, out on Friday (26th) features a collection of transcripts from notable interviews conducted at the event across the decades, edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, with an introduction by festival director Peter Florence.
The 30 interviews include such stellar names as Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Jimmy Carter, Jung Chang, Stephen Fry, Germaine Greer, Seamus Heaney, Christopher Hitchens, Eric Hobsbawm, Kazuo Ishiguro, Judith Kerr, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ian McEwan, Wangari Maathai, Hilary Mantel, Salman Rushdie, Desmond Tutu and Jeanette Winterson.
Florence commented: “The writers featured in this collection are free-thinkers, people who imagine the world. The scientists and activists are instrumental in changing it. In an age of promises and reaction, of volatility and certainty, of identity and borders these people offer inquiry, thought and empathy; they tell truths, they embrace plurality and they range across time and space. They are all inspiring, enlightening and often very funny. Welcome to Hay.”
Hay Festival Conversations (p/b, £10) can be bought either from bookshops or online at hayfestival.org/shop. Proceeds will go to the Hay Festival Foundation, supporting education and literacy work in communities in the UK and around the world.