Each year, Hay Festival Wales champions 10 remarkable debuts from first time authors as a part of our Debut Discoveries series. Our line-up for 2023 includes Nathan Munday with his debut Whaling. Get to know Nathan better in this Q&A...
What compelled you to write your debut?
In 2016, I spent three weeks exploring Massachusetts after attending a conference at Harvard. My friends went on to the Big Apple, but I was drawn to the Island of Nantucket with its chowder, lighthouses, and beaches. ‘Sandy, sterile soil, tempting no-one’ – that was one of the early definitions for ‘Nantucket’. Well, it wooed me, especially with the additional promise of a $40 bed in an old lifeboat station.
Having landed, I found myself in the Whaling Museum opposite the jetty. Upstairs, a special exhibition on worldwide whaling contained a small card with ‘Wales’ written on it. I looked closer.
I had no idea. The cogs were turning… A year later, the first page of Whaling emerged during a writing course in Tŷ Newydd with Jon Gower and Horatio Clare. It was a special week. Little did I know that Jon would later edit my book, and that Horatio would be interviewing me at this year’s Festival.
What does being featured in Hay Festival’s Debut Discoveries mean to you?
It’s brilliant! The Hay Festival is such an important melting pot of different ideas and voices. Sadly, that fantastic youth hostel on Nantucket – the place where the idea for my novel developed – has since closed meaning that Nantucket is almost off-limits to those with a limited budget. I’m glad that the Hay Festival isn’t off-limits to new writers. There’s space here for the emerging as well as the established.
What are you looking forward to at the Festival?
Books, catching-up with old friends, and hearing Richard E Grant on Saturday.
What book(s) are you reading at the moment?
I’ve started the Cosmic Trilogy by C. S. Lewis and have just finished Cuddy by Ben Myers. Excellent.
What advice would you give to those writing their own debuts?
Don’t be put-off by one reader. Remember William Golding.
Watch Nathan Munday talk Whaling with Horatio Clare on Hay Player now.