Hay Festival 2022 – Children Secondary

What every young person needs to know. Join this interactive workshop with bestselling author and financial empowerment guide Linda Davies, where you’ll learn how to create a healthy relationship with money.

Theraplay is a way of playing with your child which builds and enhances attachment, self-esteem, trust in each other and joyful engagement.The ideas can be used in everyday parenting and in any setting where relationship connection is important. It is based on the natural patterns of healthy interaction between parent and child. Join our family Theraplay group and experience what it’s like! The group will be playful, physical, personal and fun. Everyone joins in so come prepared for activity.

Join the award-winning author, environmentalist and zoologist to explore her new novel in which dark forces are destroying nature. Those with the ability to listen to animal thoughts stand in their way. Who will triumph in this epic conflict? Who will learn The Song That Sings Us and what it means, in the world of the story and on our own planet?

An exciting workshop with plenty of hands-on activities and exciting coding challenges for parents and children who will work together and code Sphero SPRK+ robot to dance to their favourite song. Children will then code their Spheros to race, with amazing prizes for the winning robots.

Setting the scene and atmosphere is key to a twisting thriller story that keeps readers guessing. From sweet summer roses to the foetid stench of decay, scent is a powerful, yet all too often an underused, storytelling tool. Krystal Sutherland, author of House of Hollow, leads an interactive workshop on good and bad smells, and how to use the language of smell to create atmosphere in your writing.

Join the internationally bestselling author of The Miniaturist in conversation with the Unbound publisher about her dazzling, feminist retelling of the Greek myth Medusa. Exiled to a far-flung island by the whims of the gods, Medusa has little company except the snakes that adorn her head instead of hair. But when a charmed, beautiful boy called Perseus arrives on the island, her lonely existence is disrupted with the force of a supernova, unleashing desire, love and betrayal.

How best can we support children and young people with their mental health and wellbeing? Join the Strong Young Minds champions and wellbeing ambassadors for a panel discussion about ways we can provide support to our young people.

Actor and award-winning writer Manjeet grew up in a house where there were no books. She was put on the ‘slow readers’ table in junior school and in secondary school was told ‘not to get her hopes up’ for her English GCSE. In this interactive workshop, Manjeet uses her own story to help liberate you from your fears around writing and open up a space for creativity, while supporting you to find your unique storytelling voice.

Award-winning Welsh author Manon Steffan Ros leads an informal writing workshop about how to write about the things that matter to us. How can we use stories as a way of making us feel a bit better, or to better understand the world? Manon guides us into the world of creative writing with tasks that aim to open up a new way of interpreting the world.

Aneesa Marufu’s workshop event focuses on fantasy world-building. Learn about the inspiration and mythology which inspired the novel, and use Aneesa’s tips to create your own fantasy world as an audience. You’ll also get the chance to hear Aneesa read from The Balloon Thief.

From acclaimed writer and comedian Jenny Eclair comes a hilarious and heartbreaking story about friendship against the odds. When Hermione discovers Helena’s writing under her bedroom wallpaper she is transported back to summer 1975 to discover a truth about Helena’s future that suggests she is in great danger…

The writer and illustrator of this groundbreaking YA memoir about being a trans teen is an influencer, filmmaker and bold new voice in comics. He takes readers on a heartbreaking but ultimately healing path as he overcomes trauma, confusion and dubious fashion choices to become the man he was always meant to be. This book will resonate not just with trans teens, but with every young person who has ever felt the awkward sting of finding their identity in adolescence.

Danielle Jawando’s new novel is a powerful coming-of-age story set in Manchester about chance encounters, injustice and how the choices that we make can completely change our future. Danielle Jawando teaches creative writing, her credits including Coronation Street and her debut YA novel And the Stars Were Burning Brightly was shortlisted for many awards.