Arriving at Hay Festival this year felt altogether different. It was as though the little book town on the English-Welsh border was ready for me this time – or perhaps I was more ready for it.
Last year had been a baptism of fire: I’d arrived clutching my début novel, The Crazy Truth, launching it live to a BBC Radio 4 audience, while nervously talking about how my story has the collective power to heal trauma. This time, I wasn’t being interviewed by my literary hero Rachel Trezise in front of an audience of my family and peers. A surreal and exhilarating moment that’ll stay with me forever. Later, I remember standing in the Hay bookshop, next to James Blunt’s queue – which snaked out the door – signing my books with a pink biro, wondering what the hell I was doing there.
But this time, I wasn’t a fish out of water.
This time, I was a worker.
I was a Writer at Work – albeit armed with my grandmother’s second-hand vintage Burberry and a pair of pearl earrings. It’s funny how a couple of fashion cues, those quiet symbols of cultural capital, can help you glide through the Green Room as though you belong.
And yet this time, something deeper had shifted. John Cooper Clarke had a gig, as did Kit de Waal and Joelle Taylor – all huge literary influences. I was lucky enough to exchange work with Joelle in the Green Room garden, a quiet highlight of the week.
This time, I felt more at home.
Most of my cohort are from marginalised or under-represented backgrounds. Even our National Poet, Hanan Issa, who also grew up in a council house, was there to give us a workshop – a necessary tonic in a packed schedule. For the first time, it felt like the imposter syndrome was beginning to fade, the class anxiety was dissipating. We’d been offered a seat at the table – and not just as tokens.
At our first Q&A in the Writers at Work tent, I found myself pausing at the phrase ‘Writer at Work.’ It struck me how strange it felt to put ‘writer’ and ‘work’ side by side – even though I do work tirelessly in the industry, reading and writing still felt like a luxury. That said, my job consists of shaping and prepping manuscripts for publication. I read unpublished works and supply quotes. I mentor young women breaking into publishing, as well as bringing together and celebrating the overworked and underpaid women who help to keep Welsh publishing alive. All of it valuable, all of it meaningful – but I rarely make time for my own writing.
Hay changed that. It was transformative.
Talks with Owen Sheers and Fflur Dafydd cracked open the door to writing for television and film. Both stressed the importance of writing across multiple forms – and for the first time, I saw that path as a possibility. It felt like I’d been given permission to expand and reach further.
I was lucky enough to attend the launch of Birdland by Jon Gower. I surprised him in the bookshop afterwards, where he inscribed my copy, addressing me as a ‘fellow author.’ It felt strange, but also validating. I’ll always cherish that moment.
There were joyful surprises too – like meeting Alison Steadman in the Green Room. One of my favourite actors from beloved sitcom 'Gavin & Stacey', but I am a huge fan of Mike Leigh, and especially loved her in 'Abigail’s Party'. We had a lovely chat and she told me how the character Doris used to make Welsh cakes for the cast before she passed. Fittingly, I found out the Green Room gave out over 400 Welsh cakes a day – there was always someone popping a little raisin-spotted treat into their mouth every time I queued for coffee.
And then there was Ruby Wax – casually flinging her crushed orange velvet boots up on the table. I’d met her years before in London and she had signed my copy of Frazzled, a book taught me to reroute the neural pathways using meditation and living in the present. Seeing her there felt cyclical and grounding all at once.
Another powerful moment came during a talk between this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize winner, Yasmin Zaher and Dr Elaine Canning. Yasmin’s intuitive creative process was an affirmation. She unapologetically threw out the rulebook and wrote for the process, not the product. It reignited my passion – the idea that the work matters because you matter.
Adrian, Tiff and Carys worked tirelessly behind the scenes, bringing in brilliant, influential authors and industry professionals to impart their wisdom. We were given an invaluable, honest insight into the publishing world – from a writer’s perspective. And amid the talks, the chats in the tent, and the late-night reflections, I both lost and found myself.
I lost the fear, and through the talks, the conversations, the community – I found myself. As soon as I came home, I set boundaries to protect my craft. I’ve now started treating it as a job – not just a hobby or a side-hustle. For the first time, I’ve began to understand what it means to be a working writer. I even decided to learn Welsh! A conversation in the Green Room with Clare Furlong from Literature Wales has led to me enrolling on an entry level Dysgu Cymraeg course.
Hay gave me community. It gave me purpose. It reminded me I’m not alone.
I met the incredibly talented and open-hearted writers from our cohort, and we’re still in touch – still climbing the mountain together. All of our encounters – our stories, our backgrounds and unexpected conversations – moved and inspired me.
I feel as though all of the moments and revelations at this year’s Hay have somehow embodied the breadcrumbs, the gems from my journey of becoming, gently guiding me forward. They’ve led to one clear realisation: it’s time. Time to take my writing seriously. Time to get down to the business of treating it as the important work it truly is.
What I took from Hay this year was worth far more than any single session. I took away community, determination, and a rare and generous insight into an industry that often lies just out of reach. And most of all, a reason – and a reminder – to make my craft centre stage in the maelstrom of what is my life.
This year, I wasn’t just there for the show. I was a worker. A Writer at Work.
Since coming home, I found a little slice of Hay in a new café by the sea – a place with a view that offers calm between storms. It was there, after witnessing a group gathering for a wake, that I sat down and drafted a new poem called:
The Farewell
Bible-black suits and cropped tweed
bake in the June sun, small-talk sun.
Sea mist suns the stripped shore,
canvas blues and golds
edging towards the end.
Goblets of stringent gin and cloudy beer
dot the din. Accents hard to catch,
until an American wades in,
‘When I was in L.A. … George Clooney.’
A British woman chips in,
‘Joanna Lumley … so down to earth,
she even had a cup of tea…’
The waitress in baking-black calls: ‘John?’
and I wonder if John has ordered from the grave.
No one takes the coffee.
‘…Jennifer’s husband works in film.
Some bizarre things.
Remember that zombie film?’
More mourners trickle in,
and the waiter dutifully shifts the tables
so they can ‘talk together,’ because,
‘You do want to talk together, don’t you?’
They reshuffle, not removing jackets,
and a single crisp leaf
from last autumn’s fall twizzles
in the sea–sun
beer–sun
John’s sun.
Dr Gemma June Howell is one of the Hay Festival 2025 Writers at Work, a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye with the support of Literature Wales and Folding Rock, funded by Arts Council of Wales.
A novelist, poet, activist, and cultural critic. Her hybrid poetry novel The Crazy Truth (Seren, 2024), developed as part of her PhD in Creative & Critical Writing at Swansea University, explores Welsh working-class identity in post-industrial Wales. A finalist for the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry in 2010, she was first published by the Red Poets at 16 and is the first woman to write dialect poetry from the Rhymney Valley, as featured on BBC Radio 4’s Tongue & Talk: The Dialect Poets. Her début poetry collection ‘Rock Life’ and her collection of experimental short fiction ‘Inside the Treacle Well’ (Hafan Books, 2009) centre marginalised working-class voices.
Gemma writes for Buzz Mag and Nation Cymru. She is Associate Editor at Culture Matters and an editor at Honno, Welsh Women’s Press. She edited the anthology Land of Change: Stories of Struggle & Solidarity from Wales (2022) and is the founder of Women Publishing Wales – Menywod Cyhoeddi Cymru CIC. Her work has appeared in Bloodaxe Books, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales and on the BBC. She is a passionate advocate for greater representation in publishing and the arts.