Making Hay on Wye

A literary festival is a strange event. Traditionally, writers are reclusive and introverted, which is why they choose paper as a medium in the first place. Readers, too are a solitary bunch, one of the beauties of a book being that you can dive into it utterly alone, leaving family, friends and the irritations of everyday life behind you. It has always struck me as an unusual idea then, for writers and readers to come together, to talk, to show themselves off and to create the general hubbub that is a literary festival.