Literary Village

From today's Interesting Thing of the Day, an article about a Welsh village where there is 1 bookstore for every 37 residents. Sounds like heaven.

The highest concentration of visitors descends on the town during the last few weeks of May for an event that has become world renowned: The Guardian Hay Festival. Launched in 1988 by Peter Florence and now attracting some 80,000 attendees annually, this literary festival has drawn famous writers such as Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, John Updike, and Don DeLillo, among many others, to give readings and conduct book signings for the assembled crowd. One unique aspect of the festival is the fact that attendees are likely to run into their literary heroes in the street (or at the pub) because of the small size of the town.