Preview of programme and events...

Speakers include historian and biographer Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans and Mao, the novelist Ian McEwan, author of Atonement, and environmental writers and campaigners Montagu Don, Mark Lynas and Tim Smit. They will appear alongside Maldivian writers including Ogaru Ibrahim Waheed and Fathmath Nahula. Mauritian-born, electronic fusion artist Ravin provides musical enchantment, and local bands performing include Fasy Live.

As well as the live events, Hay Festival Maldives will commission a series of lectures to be delivered online by prominent artists, scientists and historians. These will debate environments that are facing transformation over the next one hundred years and what this means for the people living there. These online lectures will be launched as part of the Festival in October.

The Festival with the National Centre for the Arts is developing a rolling programme of workshops during 2010/2011 which will teach children and young people how to interview their parents and grandparents, to gather and record legends and stories about their experiences of life in the Maldives over the last one hundred years. These stories will be collected in a huge online library, to be the launchpad for the Festival in its second edition in 2011.

The final day of the Festival is dedicated to the next generation of artists. Workshops for schools and colleges will be available for students to come and learn from experts about topics such as film-making, publishing, writing and journalism.