Hay Festival

Hay Festival Rebecca: [00:00:00] Before we start. If you could say your first and last name. Caroline: [00:00:09] Caroline. Caroline, Michel. Rebecca: [00:00:15] Hello, and welcome to Shelf Healing, UCL's bibliotherapy podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Markwick Our guest today is Caroline Michel. Caroline has been the CEO of PFD since 2007, before that she headed up at the William Morris agency in London for three years, she has over 25 years worth of experience in the publishing industry and ran both Vintage at Random House and Harper Press, at Harper Collins. She's the Chair of the Hay Literary Festival, Chair of the BFI trust, and was a Trustee of Somerset house. She is also a fellow of the RSA and Vice-President of the London Library. The Hay Festival this year is celebrating its 34th spring edition and has more than 200 acclaimed writers, global policy makers, historians, poets, pioneers, and innovators taking part in events across the 12 days of the festival. The festival will be broadcasting free online from Hay on Wye from the 26th of May to the 6th of June. And in case you hadn't guessed, Caroline is here in her capacity as Chair of the Hay Literary Festival. Welcome to the podcast, Caroline. Caroline: [00:01:18] Thank you, Rebecca. It's lovely to be here. And God listening to you talk about Hay Festival next week just makes me excited beyond belief. I mean, this, this time a year ago, we did not know what our future was going to be. You know, we, we heard in March, we were shut down. We had everything planned. We, you know, we built a site that holds 350,000 people who come through every year. And ticket sales are our lifeblood as we are a non-for-profit organization. So we rely on people coming through, people seeing things, becoming an admin to pay coming back year after year. And it's, it's rather remarkable to be here now a year later. When we've transferred the festival to digital in every country around the world that we run the festival. So, Hay last year it was incredible. Within two weeks, our sponsors agreed to stay put, um, we turned the festival from live into digital and we had over 500,000 people registered from all over the world, come and listen. Uh, and it was, it was one of the most exciting moments. I think that I can remember. We had 74 different countries come. People from 74 different countries have come and listen to events. We had very clever, well, then it felt very new and exciting having the chat room at the side. So people as they almost as if they were in a queue, anywhere in the world were meeting each other on the side of the screen, as we waited for the speaker to arrive and it was, it was electrifying and exhilarating. And I think it was that moment that you saw that. People who are inspiring or inspiring on screen, on zoom as they are, you know, almost as much as they are alive. So that gave us the courage to, with our rest, the rest of our festivals around the world and Spain and Columbia and Peru, Mexico, and in creation to also to also run needs as, as digital events, which was all we could do. And so here I am now on the eve of our 34th festival. And over the last year, we've had over 2 million people join our events from all over the world. And that, that to me is beyond exciting because I think it shows our appetite for learning and listening, being entertained for the pleasure of just listening to people talk about their passions, whether it's science, whether it's history, whether it's politics, but it's ideas, whether it's novels, uh, particularly children. Um, you know, we, we have, oh, I'm rabbiting on. I just get so excited about the festival. As you can hear. Rebecca: [00:03:57] Yeah, it was, it was so impressive last year, the speed at which you managed to get it turned around because like you said, it wasn't until March and the festival is in May. So it only gave you a couple of months. Caroline: [00:04:11] It was amazing. We have the most incredible team. I got down there. It was literally the weekend before they, they locked everything down. I drove down on, on the Monday morning, sat with the team. We sat in the, um, in the office and just hit the phones, you know, talk to everybody we knew who might support us, give us a bit of money. The board, incredible Hay Festival board, who literally spoke to, you know, everybody who might be able to help us in Welsh government and just everywhere. And the team without flapping without, you know, blinking twice, just set to, to set, you know, to create the most remarkable online festival. And I think, I think our writers and our participants, but just which is, you know, nobody for a second said, no, um, it's never going to work or no, I'm not going to do it. They just think just the engagement and the goodwill from everyone from us sponsors, our patrons, our friends up, you know, the normal people who come and expecting a live event. Just everybody seemed to think, okay, this is what we have to do. This is what we'll do. So it was really lovely and it was lovely hearing people say they sat around their kitchen table as a family and watch the events for kids. The family events, the big events with some of our sort of main stars of, of last year. And, um, and it it's happened like that around the world. Um, Cristina Fuentes who runs our international festivals this morning, sent me a note from somebody in Columbia and he said, you know, through a time of darkness, the festival brought light, you know, through a time of bleakness, when you felt there was nothing to look forward to, there was hope, and it it's one of the, and we've had notes like that from people around the world. And it's, it's been, it's been extraordinary, very humbling. I love that after Catagena this year, the newspapers cause Cartagena in Columbia is a it's a, it's a very, very contained festival. It's in the beautiful parts of the old city and the events we can, we can seat a couple of thousand people. But it, it feels because it just contained, it feels that. And because we ran it digitally, we reached a million people and the newspaper said this was culture democratized. And it was a wonderful thing to think that we give more people the opportunity to take part. Rebecca: [00:06:36] Yeah. And that leads quite nicely into the question that I ask all of our guests here on Shelf Healing. Which is, do you feel that reading can be therapeutic? Obviously, many people feel that if you've got a million people calling into to watch the festival in Columbia, but do you personally feel that reading is therapeutic? Caroline: [00:06:57] I, um, I think reading is as natural as breathing, you know, I, I, I, you know, it's my life basically, you know, it's my career. It's my passion. It's I can't imagine a moment where I'm not with a book or pages of the manuscript or I panic if I'm not. So it's not even so much therapeutic as a necessity for life. For me, you know, some, I can't remember as a child, I went to boarding school at the age of seven and I can remember my comfort, my joy, my entertainment, my pleasure, my feeling part of the world was through the pages of a book. And that doesn't mean to say that I was some kind of swot I wasn't at all, but I just felt comfortable between the pages of the book. Hmm. Rebecca: [00:07:47] I love that. That's such a brilliant way of putting it, you know, comfortable within the pages of a book. What, what kind of books do you tend to reach for then if you want to relax or get away from like work reading into more pleasure reading. Caroline: [00:08:01] I didn't do English at University. Um, so I've got massive holes, you know, a lot of, uh, So I've worked with just the greatest writers in the world and, you know, Hay puts you into the area with writers from all over the world. And I'm, I'm so embarrassed so much at the time that I didn't grow up with. That innate knowledge of, you know, the great big reads from various countries. And so, and I came to it all quite late, but I was very lucky, very early on because my husband ran Faber and Faber and I'd always loved poetry. And when I was, when I left, I did postgraduate law and I was terrible at it and left and went to work for a poetry magazine run by a friend of mine.

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