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.