“The programme of events has become a smorgasbord of heterogeneity, a mixumgatherum of creativity and gravitas… an excellent festival.”
-The Independent
The town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales seems like an unlikely place to hold a book festival, but it garnered an international reputation as a book town in the late 1970′s through the persistence of a bookstore owner, Richard Booth, who believed that a town full of bookshops could become an international attraction.
The Hay Festival – which Bill Clinton famously called the “Woodstock of the mind” begins May 27th and runs through June 6th.
If you can’t make it to Wales, and you’re looking for something a little closer to home, the town of Sidney by the Sea in British Columbia is modeled after Hay-on-Wye. It also has the added benefit of being just a short hop away from, what noted columnist Allan Fotheringham describes as, “the most magnificent bookstore in Canada, possibly in North America,” Munro’s Books in nearby Victoria.