Books or bills: Can we afford to spend money on both?

Life is all about making decisions, and at the moment pretty much everyone is faced with difficult choices, says Sam Davey, founder and director of the Hastings Book Festival in an open letter to Hastings Online Times in which she explains how prompt bookings will greatly assist the organisers.

When I founded the festival in 2018, alongside my fellow Hastings writer Marcia Woolf, I did it because I love books and the written word, and wanted to share that love with the wider Hastings and St Leonards community.

Over the past few years, the festival has welcomed best-selling authors such as Sophie Hannah, Monique Roffey, Patrick Gale and Alice Roberts to the Hastings stage and has also provided opportunities for local and emerging writers to share their work more widely.

The programme for 2022 took time to pull together because funding is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain and unfortunately festivals cost money. The Hastings Book Festival is run by volunteers – and I am constantly in awe of the time, commitment, creativity and good humour my fellow festival volunteers devote to shaping and crafting the festival.

But despite the huge number of voluntary hours,  artists and venues quite rightly need to be paid – and no matter how hard you try, there are certain overheads you just can’t avoid. Even so, we still manage to do it on a shoe-string and have always tried to offer as many affordable and free events as we can.

This year we have worked hard to present a really diverse line-up – from war correspondent Christina Lamb (in conversation with our very own Erica Smith) to historian Alison Weir. From Hawthornden-winning poet John McCulloch to explorer and navigator Tristan Gooley.

We journey from the hard-hitting essays of the British Black Lives Matter movement to the intricacies of Shakespearean philosophy (with local actor and author Emily Carding), and from true crime in the form of Stephen King’s favourite author Alex Marwood, to an exploration of the romantic poets – and particularly John Keats’ very particular relationship with St Leonards.

Many local writers form part of the festival line-up – including award-winning journalist and interviewer Ginny Dougary, Booker-shortlisted author Simon Mawer, whose new book Ancestry traces his family’s roots in All Saints Street, and Anita Kelsey, the cat whisperer, with her remarkable insights into feline behaviour.

We are also proud to welcome classicist, broadcaster and stand-up comedian Natalie Haynes, who is visiting the festival to launch her most recent book Stone Blind – The Story of Medusa, and the celebrated author Miranda Seymour, whose new work on Jean Rhys has been recognised as one of this year’s most highly praised biographies. Miranda will be in conversation with Andy Miller – author of The Year of Reading Dangerously – and presenter of the Backlisted podcast.

The Festival also offers workshops for writers and creatives – with specific events for those considering writing for children or young adults and, in response to a plea from previous years, an art and craft workshop for adults – why should fun be only for children?

So what’s the problem?

Quite starkly, the dilemma facing many of the people I have spoken to is a straitening of circumstances that is making them consider very, very carefully how they chose to spend what money they have. If you have to choose between books or bills, I think we all know that the choice has to be to keep food on the table, and heat and light in our homes.

I understand that – it’s the decision I would make myself. Given this, I am sending out a heartfelt plea regarding this year’s Book Festival. If you are planning to attend one of our events, but haven’t got round to booking yet, please could you do so by this weekend (September 11).

There will still definitely be a Book Festival this year –  a number of events are selling well and others have already sold out – but we are having to consider making these difficult decisions for those events  where ticket numbers just aren’t strong enough to make them viable.

We do not want to ask those authors and performers who are not local to undertake a wasted journey,  and need to give both performers and venues reasonable notice if we need to cancel or postpone events. I am therefore writing to our artists and venues this morning to let them know that we may need to move events to smaller venues, postpone to a later date or, in some circumstances, cancel the event out-right.

I can assure you that this is not a choice I ever wanted to make or have made lightly, but I am very aware of the need to recognise the incredibly difficult situation in which we all find ourselves.

Whatever happens, my consolation is that the world of the written word still remains. For me, a book is frequently a place of wonder, a destination that I can escape to if I want to forget for a time the problems and demands of 21^st century living. That refuge is not mine alone, but is there for all who are able to find joy and solace in the written word, and I hope that it remains so for all of us in the days ahead.

Sam Davey
Founder and Director
Hastings Book Festival

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