Hay Festival 2016

For BBC Radio 3’s The Essay two writers consider the art of storytelling. Today’s session features artist Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, who considers the idea of storytelling through objects and novelist and short story writer Jon Gower who reflects on lessons learned from a master storyteller - his grandfather.

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 from Monday 30 and Tuesday 31 May.

Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult over 18 years

Please drop in to our new Compass venue, quiz leading academics about their subject and engage in some critical thinking. As part of Hay Festival 2016 and with help from the Welsh Government we have invited a range of university lecturers and speakers to drop in, talk about their subject areas and about university life.

Monica Grady is Professor of Planetary and Space Science at the Open University.

Meet the authors of four of the most talked about YA books: Mind Your Head, Crush, Twenty Questions for Gloria and Orange Boy and hear how their books explore the complex and high-octane dramas of adolescence – including aspects of love, hate and psychological pressure.

Did you know that we share half of our DNA with a banana? Or that rattlesnakes can kill you even when they are dead? Or that we make better decisions when we need a wee? Test yourself on some of the weird and wonderful science facts explained by the scientist and TV expert best known for the TV series Duck Quacks Don’t Echo.

The Courtyard Theatre’s education department will be running ‘a play in a day’ workshop on Romeo and Juliet, designed to inspire and challenge 15- to 16-year-olds. The workshop will cover the whole play but break it down and give attendees the opportunity to explore new ways of bring the text to life –and take part in stage combat. It will end with a performance of the young people’s work. This session is aimed at a hands-on approach to Shakespeare, whether you have never had any interest in his work or are an ardent fan.

The Iranian human rights lawyer and activist tells of her fight for reform inside Iran, and the devastating backlash she faced after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Having fought tirelessly for democracy, equality before the law and freedom of speech, Ebadi became a global voice of inspiration. Yet, inside her own country, her life has been plagued by surveillance, intimidation and violence

Are you willing to venture into the depths of your brain? Dr Critchlow will shock your senses, read your mind and explore how current neuroscience is shaping how we see our lives. Suitable for intrepid adventurers of all ages.

The great names of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Copernicus, Raphael and Michelangelo were the mark of an age that saw a rush of discovery, the breaking down of barriers of ignorance and a newly connected world both politically and economically. Today we have better education and resources, the rate of innovation is doubling every year and there are great leaps in science, trade, migration and technology. Goldin argues that the results this time could be greater, but the world faces many of the same dangers as Renaissance man: warring ideologies, fundamentalism, climate change and pandemic.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare we have commissioned six English language and six Hispanic writers to create stories to celebrate both writers and to offer new and intriguing perspectives on them. In this first of three sessions chaired by Rosie Goldsmith, the first three writers introduce their tales. “Yuri Herrera must be a thousand years old. He must have travelled to hell, and heaven, and back again. He must have once been a girl, an animal, a rock, a boy, and a woman. Nothing else explains the vastness of his understanding” – Valeria Luiselli. Marcos Giralt Torrente is the winner of the Spanish National Book Award, whose The End of Love is published in English. Poet and novelist Ben Okri won the Booker Prize for The Famished Road.

The multi-award-winning virtuosa trumpeter and classical music advocate plays pieces from her new album, released on 13 May, and talks about her music with BBC Radio 3’s Clemency Burton-Hill. She is accompanied by the 2014 Young Musician of the Year, Martin James Bartlett.

The world is blowing up. Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption. Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes-ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes is a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of The Punishment of Virtue. Harding is the author of A Very Expensive Poison [see event 83] and one of the journalists on the Panama Papers story. They talk to Oliver Bullough, Orwell Prize shortlisted author of Let Our Fame Be Great and the writer and presenter of the film about Ukranian corruption Bloody Money [see event 443].

Come, dragon tamers everywhere! Practise your Dragonese with author and illustrator Cressida Cowell, creator of the awesome How to Train your Dragon books. Learn the secrets of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third – sword-fighter, dragon whisperer and greatest Viking Hero who ever lived. The author celebrates the grand finale of this best-selling series.

Described by John Green as “an insanely beautiful writer”, the award-winning author of the Chaos Walking trilogy has just completed the screenplay for a major motion picture of A Monster Calls. Join him and enjoy a first preview of scenes from the film.

The chair of the Wellcome Book Prize jury reflects on how we share what we know, and how science progresses. The shortlist for this year’s prize is The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss, It’s All In Your Head by Suzanne O’Sullivan, Playthings by Alex Pheby, The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink and NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman. The winner is announced on 25 April.

The Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of 1599 offers an intimate portrait of one of Shakespeare’s most inspired moments: the year of King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. 1606, while a very good year for Shakespeare, is a fraught one for England. Plague returns. There is surprising resistance to the new king’s desire to turn England and Scotland into a united Britain. And fear and uncertainty sweep the land and expose deep divisions in the aftermath of a failed terrorist attack that came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot.

Baxter’s drawings are a delicious stew of pulp adventure novels, highbrow jinks, and outright absurdity: lonesome cowboys confront the latest in modern art, brave men tremble before moussaka, schoolgirls hoard hashish, and the world’s fruits are in constant peril. Wimples abound. The artist talks to John Mitchinson.

Working memory allows us to hold information in mind. How does this influence our everyday lives? Professor Gathercole is Unit Director at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.