Kells 2015

Eddie Shanahan, Chair of the Council of Irish Fashion Designers, will talk with Sharon Wauchob, Paris-based Irish fashion designer, about the fashion industry here at home and in the international arena.

Biographer Anne Chambers talks for the first time in a public forum about her definitive account of the life and career of one of the greatest Irishmen of the 20th century: TK Whitaker, probably the country’s best known and most influential public servant. She talks to Myles Dungan.

Menna Elfyn (Wales), Alan Spence (Scotland), Peter Fallon and Breda Wall Ryan (Ireland) share their contribution to this unique collection of poetry honouring the United Nations International Day of Happiness.

Directed by Jerry Rothwell. Duration 112 minutes.

In 1971, a group of friends sail into a nuclear test zone and their protest captures the world’s imagination, giving birth to Greenpeace and defining the modern green movement. Media savvy from the beginning, these pioneers captured their seat-of-the-pants activist adventures on 16mm film. From this vivid archive and sly narration by Robert Hunter, an early guiding force of the organization, Jerry Rothwell has created a thrilling, sometimes terrifying film. When youthful energy comes up against the complexities of a growing organization, and idealism meets compromise, the group find their battle to save the planet forces them also to fight each other. This insightful film is also a vibrant, moving reflection on the struggle to balance the political and the personal.

Winner of World Cinema Documentary Jury Award for Editing, Sundance Film Festival, 2015. Followed by Q&A with director Jerry Rothwell.

The leading author and Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole (Ship of Fools) argues that the future of Irish Catholicism, if it has one, lies in an ongoing thread of heresy.

John O’Halloran, Biomass Manager of Bord na Móna, takes a look at the existing and potential opportunities involved in planting willow for the renewable energy sector in Ireland. 

One of Ireland’s best-known historians, Diarmaid Ferriter is an Irish Times columnist and author of Judging Dev and The Transformation of Ireland: 1900–2000. He talks about his latest work on the Irish revolutionary period A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolutions, 1913–23.

Sean Rocks, presenter of Arena on RTÉ Radio 1, broadcasts live from Hay Festival Kells. He chats with headline guests for RTÉ’s daily arts and popular cultural show.

Broadcast live from the festival.

The charismatic actor, columnist and dramatist Michael Harding (Staring at Lakes, Hanging with the Elephant), fresh from his memorable portrayal of The Bull McCabe in John B Keane's The Field, reads from his many critically-acclaimed works of memoir and fiction.

Kells’ own funnyman, the Cooke of Kells, is returning to Hay Festival Kells. ‘I can’t wait to get back! Like the leaving cert, I have to do it twice.’

A light-hearted, al fresco evening (weather permitting) of poetry and entertainment featuring some of the festival authors.

Escape with the Kells & District Tourism Forum in a rare chance to experience the world of Headfort Demesne through its elegant parklands and river. See the Gothic-Revival Headfort Mausoleum, the elegant 18th-century bridge by Thomas Cooley, the early 20th-century Pinetum and the Island, where members of the Headfort family are buried. The tour concludes with refreshments in the grounds of Headfort House.

Vigorous walking in some parts – only suitable for people in a relatively fit condition.

The coach picks up at 9.30am sharp at Headfort Arms Hotel and 9.45am sharp at Headfort House.

Deirdre Sullivan is a ghost-writer for the Nightmare Club series. Deirdre will conduct a workshop for readers, involving spooky collaborative storytelling and getting the children to help finish a Nightmare Club story that she’s working on.

Join Fabien Erhlinghauser for a visually stunning presentation on the process involved in creating the Oscar-nominated animated feature film Song of the Sea. Including behind-the-scenes clips from the soon-to-be-released film, this is a must for anyone with a passion for animation and visual storytelling.

Dr Bernard Meehan, Keeper of Manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin, and Dr Claire Breay, Head of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the British Library, discuss scientific investigations into this famous 8th-century manuscript, which was acquired by the British Library in 2012.

Kells-born author and illustrator Matt Griffin has garnered a global reputation for striking graphic work and poster design for various industries including publishing, advertising, music, film, animation and design. He discusses his first novel A Cage of Roots.

Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Mark Skipworth chairs a discussion with musician, visual artist, political activist and writer Brian Eno, Seamus Sheridan of Sheridan's Cheesemongers, and maverick thinker and social entrepreneur Andy Middleton on the increased global demand for food, the intensification of food production, food waste and Freeganism. 

One of the most accomplished of the new Irish women writers, Sarah Baume is a graduate of the Hennessy New Irish Writing series and won the 2014 Davy Byrnes short story prize. She discusses her debut novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither.

The global phenomenon that is Derek Landy comes to Kells to talk about his bestselling Skulduggery Pleasant series, which reached its heart-stopping conclusion last year with The Dying of the Light. Derek might just give you a tiny hint of what is coming later this year in the first of his new trilogy of supernatural thrillers, Demon Road. Be afraid.

México20 is a project created by Hay Festival, in collaboration with the British Council and Conaculta, to bring together the work of twenty young Mexican writers and promote it to an international readership.

Verónica Gerber Bicecci is one of the writers featuring in the recently published México20 anthology: her Conjunto vacío (‘Empty Set’), excerpted in the anthology, will be published this year by Almadía. Verónica makes visual pieces that are texts and texts that are visual pieces. Her projects explore the infinitesimal trails of things that can’t be heard or seen. Her book Moving Out narrates the transformation of five writers into visual artists.

Her ‘Secret Lecture’ is a visual and literary performance exploring the ephemeral, fragile and contradictory lexical matter of secrets; the paradoxes between telling and hiding, between keeping a secret, writing, and language. The project consists of three parts:

1.    A 25-minute lecture;
2.   The (illegible) index cards of the lecturer; and
3.    A secret.