I’ve been talking about how the future is girl led, which means that when we talk about the future we are talking about the impact that girls will have on STEM. Stem being science, technology, engineering and maths.
Because this is a literary festival we were talking about the sci-fi genre. There’s a lot of futuristic technology and bits of pieces that we’ll have. Us humans will probably largely stay the same, but we’ll have loads of cool machines, flying cars and whatever, and all of that future will be created by those who have some sort of STEM appreciation.
I’m interested in the role that women played in STEM in the past: the STEM ‘herstory’ rather than the STEM history, and how that maps with the girls who are alive now; what they’re already doing and how we need to support more of them to pursue STEM so that our flying cars don’t accidentally kill us or do other crazy bad stuff.
During my talk there were some really cool people in the audience – interesting STEM people, as well as non STEM. I was a little bit nervous about coming to a literary festival and talking science, so I’m really pleased and a little overwhelmed by the response. There are loads of science and sci-fi books out there, but talking about the ‘tech’ itself at a literary festival is quite a bold move on my part. It went well though; of course people who like books like other things as well.
Hay is superchill and the festival village is really cool. There’s loads of delicious food, so many stages, and really interesting speakers and visitors, so I’m really looking forward to watching the other stuff that is on.
Anne-Marie Imafidon is selected for Hay 30 – celebrating a new generation of thinkers, supported by the CASE Foundation