In person! Hay’s back with a new chapter spreading joy to its fans
Hay Festival is ready to welcome back an audience – 668 days since the last event – as its Winter Weekend programme is launched today. Publicity director Christopher Bone outlines what’s in store for visitors
THIS time of year lends itself to a special magic in Hay-on-Wye. Summer has gone, fires are lit, and ideas can be put into action.
The ink is just dry on our 22nd Winter Weekend programme ready for release at noon today, a year-end wonderland of thoughtful in-person conversations, performances, debate, music and laughter running Wednesday, November 24, to Sunday, November 28.
Yes, you read that right: in-person! Six hundred and sixty-eight days since the last Hay Festival event in the UK with a ticketed audience, we’re back.
Over five days, 75 acclaimed writers, historians, poets, pioneers and innovators will take part, launching the best new fiction and non-fiction, interrogating some of the biggest issues of our time, and spreading joy and inspiration with their stories live in Hay-on-Wye.
More intimate than our spring event, our Winter Weekend sees the booktown’s independent shops, cafés and markets offer a warm welcome to festival-goers within the stunning surrounds of the Brecon Beacons.
This year, events will take place on a new festival site in the centre of Hay-on-Wye, comprising a marquee in Cae Mawr field (at the base of the town’s Oxford Road car park) and the neighbouring Hay Primary School, which many will remember as the home to festival events in the early years. It marks both a return and a fresh start.
This time 18 months ago we wouldn’t have dared dream we would get here.
Cancellation in March 2020 came at the moment of maximum financial exposure for us. We launched an urgent fundraising appeal to address our alarming situation and the response was overwhelming. Our Haymakers, sponsors and funders gave us hope of a better future.
In this time, Hay Festival events in the UK have taken place digitally, reaching millions around the world with inspiration and entertainment when we most needed it.
But fundamentally festivals are the very opposite of social distancing, they are about togetherness and live exchange, something we’ve all missed hugely and can’t wait to return to, safely.
So this year’s hybrid Winter Weekend programme hopes to offer up the best of the live and digital worlds:
Great writers share new books, from in-person appearances by Jeanette Winterson (The Night Side of the River), Sarah Moss (The Fell), Elizabeth Day (Magpie); Christopher Mer
edith (Please) and Catrin Kean (Salt), to digital events with the soon-to-beannounced winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, along with Matt Haig (The Comfort Book) and Siri Hustvedt
(Mothers, Fathers and Others).
Inspiring creatives and household names share their life stories from Miriam Margolyes (This Much Is True), Bear Grylls (Never Give Up)
and Henry Blofeld (Ten to Win... And the Last Man In), to Fi Glover and Jane Garvey (Did I say That Out Loud?: Notes on the Chuff of Life), David Hare (We Travelled: Essays and
Poems) and Emerald Fennell.
Social affairs are drawn into focus with the likes of Emma Dabiri (What White People can do Next) and Hannah Jane Parkinson (The Joy of Small Things), while the past is reimagined by the likes of Simon Jenkins (Europe’s 100 Greatest Cathedrals), Dan Jones (Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Age) and Hallie Rubenhold (The Five).
Science has its moment too with the likes of Steven Pinker (Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters), Hannah Fry and Adam Rutherford (Rutherford and Fry’s Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything), and Marcus du Sautoy (Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut); while the climate crisis takes centre stage in events with Jonathon Porritt (Hope in Hell), Jay Griffiths (Gifts of Gravity and Light), Vicki Hird (Rebugging the Planet), poet Owen Sheers, and Future Generations Commissioner for Wales Sophie Howe.
There’s laughter and music with comedians Phil Wang and Josh Widdecombe, plus musicians Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason (House of Music), Bobby Gillespie (Tenement Kid), John Illsley (My Life in Dire Straits) and an evening hosted by BBC Music Introducing...
Families are in for a treat with HAYDAYS readings and performances each morning featuring some of the best-loved writers for young people including Lauren Child (Christmas Elf ), Yuval Zommer (The Lights that Dance in the Night), and Clare Balding (Fall Off, Get Back On, Keep Going: 10 ways to be at the top of your game!)
And extra sparkle to live events comes from the town’s Market Square as a special guest turns on the town’s Christmas lights, Friday, November 26, in what has become an annual Winter Weekend highlight.
This year’s Winter Weekend is a marker and a promise of more to come in 2022.
Who knows what the world will look like then, but storytellers and artists have risen to this challenge with vigour and ingenuity, finding new and exciting ways to engage audiences.
We are here to support them, to celebrate their work and bring people together in its celebration.
Let’s get going.
Christopher Bone is Hay Festival publicity director. Hay Festival Winter Weekend takes place live and online November 24-28 in Hay-onWye. The programme is released at noon today at hayfestival.org/winter-weekend with tickets on general sale this Saturday.