Suzanne Iuppa reacts to Dylan Jones’ opinion piece in The Standard, ‘Fossil Free Books are acting like teenagers – leave Hay festival alone’. Jones is former chair of The Hay Literature Festival, now a member of the advisory board and editor-in-chief at the Evening Standard.
I was a late addition to the Hay Writers at Work cohort this year, a development programme for writers in Wales. At 58 years old, a Mum, grandma, and poet, my first thought when I got the call to join was, ‘But I don’t have a book to sell.’ I have been attending Hay Festival since 2003; some of the events were held in a school back then, and I can remember hours lost in second-hand bookshops, my first meal at The Granary, and hot tears when my hero Margaret Atwood stood up to receive her single rose after discussing fierce philosophy and literature for an hour, tottering forward in brick-like orthopaedic shoes. I always attended on my own. I was a single mum living in North Wales barely making ends meet, taking a break from writing poetry while raising my three sons and working as a forestry officer. I was concentrating on what was critical. But not for one second did I feel like I was an outlier at Hay. Because the Festival was critical too. I trusted Hay to be a place that would nourish me. Of course, I said ‘yes’ to the brilliant Tiffany Murray’s Writers at Work programme.
Over the years the international ‘pitch’ of Hay and its footprint has grown exponentially, with associated media, and artist rosters. I can only imagine what it must be like to balance costs, sales and sponsorship for the development team. In the meantime, some of the beloved bookstores in the town have closed, restaurants and independent local business too, but new ones have grown up. No matter what is going on in Hay-on-Wye for the rest of the year—and how this chimes with trends for other market towns in mid Wales— you don’t have to be an author to realise this festival and the others like it across the UK are hugely important to the welfare of writers, booksellers, publishers, agents, publicists, and journalists. Of all ages and backgrounds.
I did give thought to the livelihoods of my 2024 Writers at Work cohort (many much younger than me and launching their literary careers) seeing audience members interact with books in the signing queues. As an artist this year, I was looking with different eyes. In the bookstore, there was barging, jostling, competitiveness, even urgency from book buyers in long queues. Across the festival site, for refreshments, there was a very large, separate food court which was new to me, quite an ‘American mall’ arrangement — a more commodity-focussed set-up. There is a stronger emphasis on the act of buying.
I am going to make some references to resources here that directly reply to Dylan Jones’ comments on those who campaigned against Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship, which I experience as a polarising argument. Are those arguments about: who holds the power, who holds the resources, where does the energy go when you buy, how is it retained, or shared? Also, how is trust built through challenge to these structures, how do we open dialogue, what stories do we tell each other?
For the Hay Festival, this could a jumping off point for an alternative resource model and a course correct to a growing consumer-focussed mechanism motivated by sales, albeit trading books and ideas through a charity umbrella. Personally, I wish for our Hay to always keep its nourishing and exciting literary tradition as an inclusive space for imagining our preferred future.
First, it makes sense to me that Baillie Gifford was sponsoring many UK literary festivals, considering their historic operations and sheer amount of wealth generation and interests. But it has built in volatility for this particular cultural sector and its artists because of the company’s a) major-value unethical investments and b) tentacular reach into the literary festival scene, meaning festival platforms, sector workers and artists experience a negative domino effect on their income, business model and livelihoods when something goes wrong.
With unethical investments resourcing ecocide, war and genocide, how could any sponsorship arrangements ever go right? It is right to ask our best-loved cultural festivals to cease these associations, to not buy into these practices — hopefully, stimulating change in the investment sector.
This is not a hysterical, sanctimonious or immature thought process. It’s also not harmful to start this dialogue, and I’m thankful to Charlotte Church for lending her voice to this issue. Charlotte Church does not stop being a Hay Festival artist when she speaks up and decides not to take part, just as the 2024 Writers at Work cohort did not stop being Welsh writers at Hay when we published our joint statement in support of Fossil Free Books. It’s allowed.
I have worked in the environmental sector since 1997 as a development worker and conservationist. The UK charities I have worked for would not have taken funds from Baillie Gifford because they are not running an 100% ethical investment portfolio, so this sponsor would have fallen out of approach procedures while running due diligence checks. These checks need to be done annually with corporates and Hay Festival may not have had the capacity to do this work.
I was really pleased to meet Ruth Baker, newly appointed Development Director for the Festival at the British Council party on Friday evening. The sponsorship fall-out was very unpleasant for her in her first week, but Ruth is capable, empathic and very smart. There could be a conversation with stakeholders in the festival to secure the future of Hay, including all friends, attendees and subscribers. We can imagine together a future for the festival which is ethical and wildly successful for audiences and artists. Ruth, don’t forget the ground-breaking Well-being of Future Generations Act is firmly championing your work here and all the public sector bodies which help Writers at Work are lined up to support you.
Secondly, there is also a point to be made here about tone. Do we want to ‘other’ cultural workers and audiences? What is surprising to me is that Fossil Free Books have been described as ‘campaigners’ or a ‘climate divestment activists group’ and not authors, booksellers, freelance and employed book workers, which is exactly who they are and why they have been challenging the literary festivals. Fossil Free Books are peers supplying the labour which makes Hay happen. They are crew. They don’t want their work sphere to be supporting arms supply, genocide or climate extinction through taking sponsorship from a wealth manager funding exactly this. Baillie Gifford is honest with us, and we should witness. We can take collective action. We can take personal action. We can empathise, reflect and start conversation, though our art.
Our Welsh writing community holds and honours Cardiff-based poet Abeer Ameer as she writes poems of witness for the Gaza genocide. Abeer’s beautiful and powerful poetry can be heard on her You Tube channel. A recent poem, ‘Piece’ contains the line: ‘Her fate is to be left behind.’ There is so much un-asked for separation right now, through war, migration and death. I can empathise with artists and peers wanting to stand up, with those who have been left behind, to do something, to enact change.
Lastly, there is something about the stories we want to tell ourselves, on social media, in journalism and at the Hay Festival. Like money, stories are an exchange of energy. Exchanging stories makes things happen. I thought festival staff were transparent and professional as the sponsorship story unfolded. Dylan Jones’ public comment as the 2024 Festival concluded was not. It made me wonder if there were times that Fossil Fuel Books’ negotiations were not transparent and professional? I hope that is not the case.
I read a poem by Maura Dooley when I came home, titled ‘Currency’. It ends with the lines: ‘and this could be peace, something like // this uneasy truce of figures in a landscape, / the radio making fiction of us all.’ Yes, we are deeply interlinked with damaging systems right now, but thankfully there are also landmark stories of systems-change, and this could be one of them. It depends on the stories we tell ourselves, and each one will be derived from how we see people act.
Suzanne Iuppa is a poet and conservationist from the Dyfi Valley. Recent poems appear in Magma, Finished Creatures, Natur Cymru and Poetry Wales. She has been shortlisted for The Gingko Prize and Writer-in-Residence for Climate.Cymru. Suzanne is currently assisting with fundraising/membership at The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT).
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