Escape the day-to-day at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2024. Join us 23 May–2 June at our free-to-enter Festival site. Explore the full programme and book your individual events below. If you want to see the programme at a glance, please use our schedule view.
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What’s the opposite of a kettle? Why is the sky blue? Who invented cheese? Following last year’s triumphant Hay Festival debut, the Nincompoops return to bring some much-needed intellijments to the Festival! Join Andy Stanton (Mr Gum) and Carrie Quinlan (John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme) for a special live version of their family podcast, answering your questions with their unique mixture of wisdumb, nollidge and outright fibs. Madness, mayhem and mirth guaranteed!
Cuddle up with the Teddy Bear Ladies, Julie Tatchell and Amanda Middleditch, best known as stars of the BBC’s The Repair Shop. They’ve created the magical world of Bartie Bristle and friends in their stunning treasury Bartie Bristle and Other Stories: Tales from the Teddy Bear Ladies, and they can’t wait to share it with you!
Embark on a river-inspired journey in this magical figure-making workshop, where the wonders of nature come to life in the form of enchanting river spirits and the river goddess Gwy. We guide you through the art of crafting these whimsical figures using found leaves, sticks, flowers, seeds, nuts and a touch of string magic. No two River Spirits are alike – express your individuality through your one-of-a-kind creation. All materials are provided.
An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative: your imagination is the limit.
Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada’s oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. It was a multi-billion-dollar disaster that drove 88,000 people from their homes. Canadian writer and journalist John Vaillant talks to author Katherine Rundell about how we must prepare for a hotter, more flammable world. In Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2023) Vaillant delves into the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern wildfires and the lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant is a best-selling author and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and the Guardian, among others. As well as the Baillie Gifford Prize, Fire Weather also won Canada's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, and was a finalist the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. A #1 bestseller in Canada, Fire Weather was also named one of the ten best books of 2023 by The New York Times, among many other prominent publications in Europe and North America.
Festival favourite Natalie Haynes returns with a fresh dose of mythological musings. From Artemis to Aphrodite and Hera to Hestia, the bestselling author of Pandora’s Jar and Stone Blind brings formidable Greek goddesses the attention they deserve. These goddesses are as mighty, revered and destructive as their male counterparts. Isn’t it time we looked beyond the columns of a ruined temple to the awesome power within?
Two experts on green capitalism discuss its limits and possibilities with Bronwyn Wake, Editor in Chief of Nature Climate Change. Rathi is an award-winning senior reporter for Bloomberg News and host of climate podcast Zero. In Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions he looks at stories that bring people, policy and technology together, suggesting that the green economy is not only possible, but profitable. Dr Ritchie is senior researcher in the Programme for Global Development at the University of Oxford, as well as deputy editor and lead researcher at the highly influential online publication Our World in Data, which brings together the latest data and research on the world’s largest problems and makes it accessible for a general audience. Her latest book is Not the End of the World: How We Can be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.
Don’t miss this recital performance and conversation with singers from Welsh National Opera’s young artists programme. The musicians perform a mix of well loved opera classics and some traditional Welsh folk music, accompanied by WNO players. A conversation with the artists offers the chance to find out more about life on the road with the UK’s largest touring opera company.
A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series marking the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death. In this last of four recitals recorded for broadcast, the Leonore Piano Trio performs Fauré’s Piano Trio in D minor, Op 120 and Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor.
Spanning 3,000 years, from the birth of Minoan Crete to the death of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It is a new history of the ancient world told, for the very first time, through women. For centuries, men have been writing histories of antiquity filled with warlords, emperors and kings. But when it comes to incorporating women, aside from Cleopatra and Boudica, writers have been more comfortable describing mythical heroines than real ones. While Penelope and Helen of Troy live on in the imagination, their real-life counterparts have been relegated to the margins. In The Missing Thread, Daisy Dunn inverts this tradition and puts the women of history at the centre of the narrative.
Dr Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist and author. Her previous book, Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars, was selected for Radio 4’s Open Book and longlisted for the Runciman Award. Her In The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times and a book of the year in several outlets.
Discover how the much-loved Dame Jacqueline Wilson started her writing career, how she created some of her best-loved characters and hear all about her new book The Girl Who Wasn’t There – a story about siblings and friendship, with a hint of ghostliness! Former Children’s Laureate and author of over 100 books, Dame Jacqueline Wilson is one of Britain’s bestselling children’s authors. Best-known for characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather, she has legions of loyal fans in the UK and throughout the world.
There will be no signing after this event but printed signed bookplates will be available.
Join Nia Morais (Bardd Plant Cymru 2023–2025) in this interactive workshop-style event, to write your own ghost story. You’ll learn how to create tension and atmosphere in your writing that will scare and delight your audience.
Please bring your own notebook and pen or pencil to this event.
Make your own mask based on the nature, wildlife and folklore associated with the River Wye. Learn how to create a simple paper mask, which you can accessorise to make a river scene, an animal, a fish or a bird associated with the Wye, or the river goddess Gwy. All materials are provided.
Enjoy a half-hour open air performance between events. Singing is fun with Hay Community Choir – good for mental health, feeling you’re part of a whole. Come along and have a listen as the Choir share their joy in music.
The host of The Repair Shop shares his inspirational words for making the very best of life. With characteristic warmth and humour, he talks about the life lessons that have helped him to find positivity and growth, no matter what he’s found himself facing. “It’s very easy to be passive in life and just do what you know. But you’ll be a lot more excited every day if you shape your own future.” After leaving school at 15 without qualifications, Blades eventually managed to study for a degree in criminology and philosophy at Buckingham University before finding his vocation in restoration. He is co-founder of the social enterprises Out of the Dark and Street of Dreams, working with disadvantaged young people.
The Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question interrogates the power of love to change your life, and vice versa, in his 17th novel What Will Survive of Us. Lily and Sam, both highly successful in their careers but marking time in relationships that have quietly expired, find a connection that makes them come alive again. As they begin to work together on the page and on screen, an affair takes hold that they are powerless to resist. Arriving in mid-life, their relationship opens unexpected new worlds. But what will happen to them when familiarity, illness and age begin to take their toll? Jacobson talks to the Monocle Radio Books Editor
Birmingham-born performance poet, musician, professor, novelist and playwright Benjamin Zephaniah was ‘a hero to millions’ and a much-loved and respected performer at the Festival, counting among his many awards and accolades the Hay Festival Medal for poetry in 2021.
We assemble in memory of his life and his work. Waterstones Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho, Welsh poet and Professor at Aberystwyth University’s Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies Mererid Hopwood, poet, playwright and author of Living by Troubled Waters Roy McFarlane and friends together, through reading works by Benjamin Zephaniah and their own works in response, create a tribute to this exceptional and much-missed poet.
A wonderful opportunity to sing with musicians from Welsh National Opera. Come and learn some classic operatic repertoire in this fun, interactive workshop, suitable for all ages and with no singing experience needed. This is a family-friendly event where everyone is welcome. At the end of the workshop the WNO singers will answer all your questions in a Q&A session.
Bring your magnifying glasses to help Robin Stevens celebrate 10 years of her iconic Murder Most Unladylike series. Whether you’re part of the Detective Society, a Ministry Member or just want to join the party, come and hear all about Daisy and Hazel with Robin, and take a look forward to what’s next in the Ministry of Unladylike Activity.