Peter Florence

Peter Florence is Director of The Conversation at St Martin in the Fields in London and co-founder of the European Festivals Forest in Iceland, a carbon-capture project. He advises festivals on transformation, regeneration and the path to net zero, and consults for regional and national governments on creative industries and economic development.  Peter has started over 25 festivals across the world, from Brazil to Bangladesh. In 1988 he and his family launched the Hay Festival in Wales, which then also flourished in Latin America and Europe. He stepped down as Director in 2020 after the festival received the Princess of Asturias Prize for Communications and Humanities. He directed the Orange Word Screenwriters series and the BBC Big Read at the British Library and worked with Josephine Hart on the Poetry Hour on Shaftesbury Avenue. Peter has chaired the Booker Prize, Dylan Thomas Prize and Wales Book of the Year juries, and is a Trustee of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He co-founded, with David Campbell, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Peter sits on the European Festivals Association EFFEA jury, and has been a judge for both the EFA EFFE awards, and the Perform Europe Sustainability and Inclusion awards. He interviews thinkers and chairs conferences internationally.