Poet Lemn Sissay has been awarded the Hay Festival Medal for Poetry live on stage at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2024.

Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA-nominated, award winning writer, broadcaster and former chancellor of The University of Manchester. His most recent poetry collection, Let the Light Pour In, is a collection of poems he composed every day at the break of dawn over the past decade (Canongate Books, £12.99). They are a chronicle of his own battle with the dark, fuelled by resilience and defiant joy.

Awarded annually since Britain’s 2012 Olympic year, Hay Festival Medals draw inspiration from the original Olympic medal for poetry. Medals are given to extraordinary writers, thinkers and creatives and crafted locally by silversmith Christopher Hamilton. All feature an Athenian owl, copied from an ancient Greek silver coin dating between 450 BC and 406 BC, and are engraved with the name and category of each winner.

Lemn sits alongside Gary Lineker (Medal for Broadcast Journalism), Huw Stephens (Medal for Music), Laura Bates (Medal for Non-Fiction), and Judi Dench (Medal for Drama) as Hay Festival Medal winners 2024. 

Hay Festival CEO Julie Finch said: “Hay Festival Medals this year are awarded to honour exceptional work in the arts. We celebrate five inspirational figures at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2024.

“In a turbulent world, this spring’s edition offers a programme of hope, innovation and creativity.”

Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2024 is supported by lead sponsors Welsh Government, Arts Council England and Arts Council Wales, lead media partner the BBC and digital media partner TikTok.

Launching the best new fiction and non-fiction, while offering insights and debate around significant global issues, the programme sees writers, policy makers, pioneers and innovators take part from around the world, offering big thinking and bold ideas.