Hay Festival After hours

Hay Festival After hours: Bristol

An evening of words, ideas and re-imagined worlds

Thursday 26 March 2026, 7.30pm –  Bristol Beacon - The Lantern Hall

Hay Festival After hours brings together three of the most compelling voices in poetry, politics and cultural storytelling: Rana Dasgupta, Zakia Sewell and Vanessa Kisuule. From searing spoken word and lyrical performance to urgent global analysis and re-enchanting visions of Britain, this special event explores how stories shape who we are – and who we might yet become.

Award-winning writer Rana Dasgupta explores a world in political freefall in After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order. As Western democracies weaken, autocracies rise, international law erodes and millions are forced into dangerous migration, the promises of the nation-state are rapidly unravelling. Tracing the nation-state from its origins to its global dominance, he concludes that today’s crises are no accident – it’s time to imagine a new political order fit for a globalised world.

Rana Dasgupta is an English novelist and essayist named by Le Monde as one of 70 people who are making the world of tomorrow. Among his awards are the Commonwealth Prize and the prestigious Rabindranath Tagore Literary Award 2019 for his novel Solo.

Documentary-maker and BBC 6 Music’s newest DJ Zakia Sewell is on a quest for another Britain. Traversing the length and breadth of our island from Somerset to Scotland, she’s seeking out a different story – one that lies beyond divisive national myths and symbols.

Drawing on her book Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain, Zakia uncovers an alternative spirit that is vividly alive today in otherworldly folk songs and ancient legends, in Celtic seasonal rites and cultural echoes passed along slave trade routes. She talks to author, historian and critic Colin Grant, known for his insightful books exploring race and identity – his Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation was a Daily Telegraph 2019 Book of the Year.

Vanessa Kisuule is a writer, performer and poet based in Bristol, and is host of BBC Radio 4’s The Poetry Detective. Her poems expose the complex and contradictory impulses of the human spirit and the ugly tangle of emotions we must deal within ourselves. Committed to inspiring audiences to connect more profoundly with the art of poetry, she will be exploring the boundaries of cultural storytelling and how audiences can engage with the arts in a live setting.

Vanessa was Glastonbury Festival’s Resident Poet 2019 and Bristol City Poet 2018–20 and has worked extensively in theatre with Bristol Old Vic, Kneehigh Theatre and Pentabus. She has two poetry collections published by Burning Eye Books, Joyriding the Storm and A Recipe for Sorcery, and her work was highly commended in the Forward Poetry Prize Anthology 2019. Her debut non-fiction book Neverland: The Pleasures and Perils of Fandom was published by Canongate in 2024.

Join us for a night to remember!Booking fees are calculated at 5% per order, with a minimum charge of £3.50 and capped at a maximum of £10.

This event is supported by The Unwin Charitable Trust