Hey bookworms! Festival’s back with stories galore to enthral you
Hay Festival reveals its full in-person programme for two years today. Here, communications director Christopher Bone welcomes the lauded literary festival’s return and outlines its star-studded line-up
IT’S a big day in Hay-on-Wye. Today, as the first tent peg goes into the ground at our Dairy Meadows site, we get ready to launch the full programme of in-person for Hay Festival 2022, bringing writers and readers together again from Thursday, May 26 until Sunday, June 5.
When the Kingdom Choir closed Hay Festival 2019 with their rousing performance, we would never have imagined how the following two years could turn our world on its head. In this time, our Haymakers gave us an opportunity to do something new: to replace isolation with connection with digital editions that have reached millions.
But fundamentally festivals are the very opposite of social distancing, they are about togetherness and live exchange, something we’ve all missed hugely. And here we are now for our first in-person spring event in two years and our most accessible Festival yet. Together again in our 35th year.
Yes, it’s been 35 years since writers and readers first started coming together in Hay Festival tents, and much has changed.
What began as a party weekend in Hay to hang out and talk has been embraced around the world by tens of millions of people.
But the essence of the festival has remained: storytelling. And we’ve stories aplenty to look forward to this year:
Award-winning writers from around the world join the best from Wales as we gather to launch new work.
There’s Nobel-winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, Wales Book of the Year 2021-winner Caryl Lewis, Booker Prize-winners Damon Galgut, Bernardine Evaristo, Julian Barnes and Howard Jacobson, Festival favourites Gillian Clarke, Robert Minhinnick, Monica Ali, Ian Rankin and Stephen Fry.
We have the soon-to-beannounced winners of the Dylan Thomas Prize and International Booker Prize, and the Festival’s 10@10 series will showcase debut writers at 10am each day on site.
Journalists, economists, philosophers and diplomats take stock of global affairs, from Ukraine to the climate crisis, with Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich, historian Serhii Plokhy, investigative reporter Oliver Bullough, BBC journalist Lyse Doucet, global health specialist Devi Sridhar, and more, while leading historians including Alice Roberts, Janina Ramirez and Simon Schama reimagine the past.
Contemporary Wales comes under the spotlight as former Hay Festival Writers at Work Hanan Issa, Grug Muse and Darrent Chetty present Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales; Jon Gower and Huw Williams talk The Welsh Way: Essays on Neoliberalism and Devolution; and Dylan Huw, Crystal Jeans and David Llewellyn talk to Kirsti Bohata about their new anthology, Queer Square
Mile: Queer Short Stories From Wales.
Leading researchers and innovators share new work to explain the world around us, from Jim Al-Khalili with The Joy of Science to Suzanne O’Sullivan with her extraordinary study of psychosomatic illness, The Sleeping Beauties; while collaborations with eight universities will
showcase the latest research in the arts and sciences in a lunchtime lectures series.
Major anniversaries and new festival projects are marked throughout the programme: a new partnership with Publishing Wales spotlights Welsh publishers and their work on the global stage; the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee will be explored with a series of conversations on Women & Power led by Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon.
Spirits are lifted as activists, thinkers and stars of stage and screen share their real-life stories, including the wonderful David Harewood, Sadia Azmat, Jeffrey Boakye and Minnie Driver, and a series of Festival sessions encourage audiences to get creative with everything from dressmaking with Jenny Packham to crafting with Jay Blades.
Theatre is woven throughout the programme as Benedict Cumberbatch leads a special all-star Letters Live in aid of the DEC’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal, while Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour and The Lord Chamberlain’s Men perform in a festival theatre in the grounds of Hay Castle, and we preview Bad Wolf’s upcoming His Dark Materials and BBC Three’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends.
Late nights are given over to great entertainment with music from Bryn Terfel and Rebecca Evans, Corinne Bailey Rae, Kate Rusby, Danilo Pérez, Penguin Cafe, George Hinchliffe’s Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita, Frank Turner, The Devil’s Violin, YolanDa Brown, The Devil’s Violin, The Wellspring and The Waste Land; and comedy from Bill Bailey, Nina Conti, Simon Amstell, Reginald D Hunter, Jason Byrne, Natalie Haynes, Rich Hall, Milton Jones, Angela Barnes, Rachel Parris, Shazia Mirza, Pierre Novellie and more.
Our free Programme for Schools is back in person for two days of delights for young people all over Wales, while a packed HAYDAYS and #HAYYA programme for families encourages young readers to get creative throughout the half-term week.
With the festival site free to enter, a new offer for students, and new partnerships with Adult Learning Wales, Strong Young Minds, The National Literacy Trust, Head4Arts and The Family Place, this will be the most accessible festival edition yet.
In the coming weeks a familiar buzz will fill the air in Hay-on-Wye. Books will arrive by the crateload, printers will whirr with Hay Festival programmes, and bunting will be laced between the streets as the town gets ready to open its arms again to the world.
All that’s left now is you. Welcome to Hay Festival 2022 and see you soon.
Hay Festival 2022 takes place inperson May 26 to June 5. The full programme goes live online at noon today with public booking open this Friday at hayfestival.org/wales.