Hay Festival is releasing today Letters to the Future: On Equality and Gender (Hay Festival Press, paperback, £5), in which pioneering feminist, activist and bestselling author Laura Bates joins playwright and poet Owen Sheers in writing letters to the next generation, exploring and planning for a future where women and men live free of gender prescription and expectation.
Published to coincide with Secondary Schools day at Hay Festival Wales today, this new collection invites readers to join the authors in their imagining and mapping-out of the benefits for all in creating an equal future.
Seeds of the project were sown last year when Sheers drew on Bates’ work in delivering his reformation of masculinity for the festival’s 30th anniversary series of reformations. His tender, challenging poem addressed to his daughters, The Men You’ll Meet, was delivered to live audiences at Hay Festival events throughout the year.