For forty years, Hay Festival has brought together writers, thinkers and audiences to explore the ideas shaping our world. What began in a small town on the Welsh borders has grown into one of the world’s leading gatherings for literature and public debate. As we approach our 40th anniversary in 2027, we celebrate the power of stories and ideas to connect people and open new ways of thinking.
And it is from that perspective that I’d like to begin today.
Let me start with a simple thought.
The health of a society can often be measured by the freedom of its books.
Every society that has tried to control its people has started by controlling its books. And every society that has expanded freedom has done the opposite – it has expanded access to books.
Because books are not simply objects. They are one of humanity’s most powerful technologies, machines for communication.
Books allow ideas to travel across time. They allow imagination to cross borders. They allow us to step into lives not our own.
Books are how societies remember… argue… dissent… and imagine. And that is why publishing matters. But it is also why this moment matters.
Because publishing – like many cultural industries – is navigating a period of profound change.
Across the sector, costs have risen sharply: paper, printing, distribution. Many publishers and independent bookshops operate on extremely tight margins. After the pandemic boom, sales in several markets have begun to level off.
At the same time, the way readers discover books is being transformed. Algorithms increasingly shape visibility. Social media can turn a title into a global sensation overnight – but it can also narrow attention to what is already trending.
Artificial intelligence is raising new questions about authorship, intellectual property and the value of human creativity.
And all of this is happening in the most competitive attention economy books have ever faced. Books are no longer simply competing with other books. They are competing with streaming platforms… gaming… podcasts… short-form video… and an endless stream of digital distraction.
So the question for our industry is not simply how we produce books, it is how we ensure they are still discovered, read and discussed.
Which brings us to the importance of places like this.
The London Book Fair is one of the engine rooms of global publishing. It is where rights move across borders. Where translations begin their journeys. Where manuscripts written in one culture find readers in another. What happens in rooms like this shapes what readers around the world will encounter on their shelves in the years ahead.
But if book fairs are the engine room of publishing, festivals are its public square.
Festivals are where books meet readers. Where stories step off the page and into conversation. Where writers and audiences encounter each other directly – not through algorithms, but through dialogue.
And those audiences matter enormously. Because a book without a reader is only half alive. Readers complete the story. They recommend books to friends. They debate them. They challenge them. And they turn private reading into shared cultural life.
When readers gather at festivals, something powerful happens. Reading stops being a solitary act. And becomes a collective one. A book becomes part of a conversation. And that conversation has real impact.
Festivals introduce readers to authors they might never otherwise encounter. A reader may arrive to hear a writer they already love – and leave having discovered three new voices. In that sense, festivals are not simply celebrations of literature. They are market builders for publishing. They expand readership. They create discovery. They bring literature into the centre of public life.
And in today’s fragmented media landscape, they do something even more valuable. They create spaces for sustained attention.
Think about what that means. Thousands of people choosing to spend an hour listening to an author talk about ideas. In an age of endless scrolling, festivals defend something literature depends on: the ability to listen, think and reflect together.
But festivals also do something else. They create spaces for conversation across difference. We are living in a time of increasing polarisation. Public debate is often fragmented and reactive. Social media rewards outrage more than nuance. Festivals can offer something different.
They bring together writers, thinkers and audiences from different perspectives
and allow them to speak to one another – thoughtfully, publicly, and in good faith.
Which brings us to one of the foundations of both publishing and festivals: freedom of expression.
Without the freedom to write, there is no publishing. Without the freedom to publish, there is no literary culture. And without literary culture societies lose one of their most powerful tools for reflection and change.
Today that freedom is being tested in new ways. Across the world we are seeing increasing attempts to restrict books, challenge authors or narrow the range of voices that reach readers.
But there is another risk that receives less attention. The risk of cultural narrowing.
Publishing, like any industry, is shaped by economics. Markets reward familiarity. Algorithms amplify what is already successful. But literature thrives on something very different. It thrives on diversity of voices. Different countries. Different experiences. Different ways of seeing the world.
The richness of literature depends on what many people now call bibliodiversity. Because when publishing becomes too narrow, something essential is lost. Stories become predictable. Perspectives become limited. Literature becomes less capable of helping us understand the complexity of the world. The danger is cultural monoculture.
And monoculture is the enemy of imagination.
Festivals feel this immediately. Because the electricity of a festival programme comes from the collision of ideas. From writers who disagree. Who challenge one another. Who see the world differently. When that diversity exists, audiences encounter something extraordinary. They encounter the unfamiliar. And the unfamiliar is where curiosity begins.
I say this not only as someone who just cares deeply about books, but as someone who has seen the power of readers gathering around ideas.
At Hay Festival, where I have the privilege of working, we see this every year. Writers from across the world come together with audiences who are curious, questioning and engaged. Students sit beside professors. Lifelong readers sit beside people attending their very first literary event. And what is striking is not only the scale of those audiences – but the quality of the conversation they create.
Because books do not live only on the page. They live in the conversations they start. And festivals are one of the places where those conversations truly come alive.
This is why the relationship between publishers, book fairs and festivals matters so much. Publishers shape the ideas that enter the world. Book fairs allow those ideas to travel across borders. Festivals bring those ideas into conversation with readers. Together they form the circulatory system of literary culture. Each part depends on the others.
Without publishers there are no books. Without book fairs those books struggle to travel. Without readers – and without the festivals that connect readers and writers – those books struggle to live.
And readers, ultimately, are the heart of the system. They are not passive consumers of literature. They are its co-creators. They ask the questions. They challenge the authors. They pass stories from one reader to another. They turn books into culture.
So the responsibility we share – as publishers, agents, booksellers, festival organisers and writers – is not simply to produce and promote books. It is to protect the ecosystems that allow ideas to circulate freely and widely. To nurture readers. To defend freedom of expression.
And to ensure literature remains open to the widest possible range of voices and experiences. Because the greatest threat to literature is not technology, it is narrowness. Narrowness of imagination. Narrowness of opportunity. Narrowness of who gets to speak – and who gets heard.
If literature becomes a monoculture, we lose the very thing that makes it powerful: its ability to expand how we see the world.
But if we protect diversity of voices, freedom of ideas and the spaces where readers and writers meet, something remarkable happens. Books travel. Ideas circulate. And societies become more curious, more imaginative and more open.
This is why gatherings like the London Book Fair matter so much. They remind us that publishing is not only an industry. It is a global conversation.
And every book that leaves this fair carries with it the possibility of changing how someone, somewhere, sees the world. So our task – all of us in this room – is simple. And it is profound. To make sure that conversation remains as open, as diverse,
and as fearless as the world it seeks to describe.
Thank you.
Hay Festival CEO Julie Finch delivered this keynote speech on Thursday 12 March 2026 at The London Book Fair.