Hay Festival 2023

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative: your imagination is the limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 2.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

World-renowned veterinary surgeon Noel Fitzpatrick shares some of the most powerful tales ever from his life as the Supervet. Following on from his memoir How Animals Saved My Life, in Beyond Supervet: How Animals Make Us The Best We Can Be Fitzpatrick explores how our relationships with animals can bring out the best in each of us and introduces some of the animals he has tried to help, the families who love them and the deeply personal challenges he has faced along the way. Fitzpatrick is a world-renowned neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon and star of the hit Channel 4 television show The Supervet.

Fitzpatrick is in conversation with journalist and editor Alex Clark.

Sebastian Barry and Liz Nugent discuss their novels featuring reclusive and lonely characters whose quiet lives are unexpectedly changed. Barry’s Old God’s Time sees retired policeman Tom Kettle pulled into the darkest currents of his past when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case. The title character of crime fiction writer Nugent’s Strange Sally Diamond becomes the centre of attention after she follows her father’s instructions to put him out with the rubbish when he dies, eventually leading to messages from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she does herself. The writers talk to Rosie Goldsmith, journalist and Director of the European Literature Network.

Home and garden environments can have a positive effect on the health and wellbeing of people living with dementia. In this session, experts explain how dementia friendly homes and gardens can support people living with dementia, sharing examples of what works and doesn’t. Sarah Waller is associate specialist, Shirley Evans is interim director, and Dawn Brooker is emeritus professor and former director at the Association for Dementia Studies, while Colin Capper is associate director of evidence and participation at Alzheimer’s Society, all at the University of Worcester. Keith Oliver has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.

The TikTok community is reshaping the publishing world, bringing literature to life for a new generation of readers. Join some of the community’s leading voices to hear more about the impact of BookTok.

Every child dreams of being the boss, and in Wallace’s latest hilarious adventure that’s just what happens to 10-year-old Joss. When her dad takes her to work and his boss calls a meeting and tells them he’s giving his job away to the person with the best idea for a company game-changer, Joss sticks her hand up. The next thing she knows, she’s the boss, and her dad is horrified. As Joss whips everyone into shape, maybe they can all learn a lesson or two…even Joss herself.

Reena from Bollywood Dreams Dance Company will teach you some dynamic moves in this fun Bollywood dance workshop. You’ll learn hand gestures, some technique work and choreography. By the end of the session you’ll have formed a fun Bollywood routine to take away and show your friends!

A world-leading economist, in Edible Economics Ha-Joon Chang makes challenging economic ideas more palatable by plating them alongside stories about food from around the world. He uses histories behind familiar food items – where they come from, how they are cooked and consumed, what they mean to different cultures – to explore economic theory. In this thought-provoking event Chang will show that getting to grips with the economy is like learning a recipe: if we understand it, we can change it – and, with it, the world. He talks to Polly Russell, food historian and curator at the British Library.

The television presenter – recently seen on screens on Great British Menu – will chat to comedian Cariad Lloyd while she demonstrates recipes from her long-awaited first cookbook, The Pepperpot Diaries. Drawing on her heritage, Andi Oliver’s recipes include cherished ingredients and vibrant flavours used in traditional and new ways, creating simple dishes that will bring the unbeatable tastes of Caribbean cooking to your table. Join Oliver for a mouthwatering conversation about all things food and family.

Join us for a wild literary fleadh (festival) to celebrate the republication of Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke’s photographic novel Could Read the Sky after 26 years, and the paperback publication of Patrick McCabe’s magnificent shape-shifting epic, Poguemahone. McCabe and O’Grady will dissect the complex relationship between Ireland and Britain, from the largely invisible lives of workers who built the roads and railways, to the songs and folklore both cultures share, and the long and bitter history of violence which has often obscured this deeper cultural exchange. Their conversation will be punctuated by readings from both books. ​In conversation with John Mitchinson.

Get a world exclusive preview of The Storm We Made, set to be published in January 2024, and take home a free advance copy of the book. 1930s British Malaya: one woman’s desire to change her destiny shapes the future of a colonised nation. Desperate for a bigger life, housewife Cecily is beckoned into a life of espionage by a charismatic Japanese general. But when Cecily becomes entrenched in his plans, and inadvertently in his marriage, she helps to usher in a war which threatens to destroy her family, community, and country.

Vanessa Chan will talk to Tracy Chevalier about her debut novel, changing careers, the long process of writing, and the even stranger process of selling a novel around the world; and Tracy Chevalier will share her experience as a bestselling author, being involved in film and opera adaptations of her work, and thinking herself into the past in order to write it.

Your ticket includes a free, exclusive advance copy of The Storm We Made.

BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert series is presented by Sarah Walker and explores the music of Schubert and others. This last of four recitals broadcast during the Hay Festival week offers a popular work, Schubert’s Piano Trio No 2 in E flat, D929, performed by the Amatis Trio, regarded as one of the leading ensembles of its generation. Lea Hausmann (violin), Samuel Shepherd (cello), and Mengjie Han (piano) are celebrated for their energy, insight, creativity, communication and passion.

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Please arrive in good time.

Calling all detectives! Robin Stevens, author of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize winning Murder Most Unladylike series is coming to help you investigate The Ministry of Unladylike Activity (clue: it’s the start of a brand new series!) Robin will uncover her top writing tips, shed light on the tricks that can help you create the perfect murder mystery and unveil the inspiration behind her new team of detectives. You’ll also get the chance to put your own sleuthing skills to the test and ask your burning questions, like any good private eye.

Reena from Bollywood Dreams Dance Company will teach you some dynamic moves in this fun Bollywood dance workshop. You’ll learn hand gestures, some technique work and choreography. By the end of the session you’ll have formed a fun Bollywood routine to take away and show your friends!

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative: your imagination is the limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 2.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

She's back! Internationally renowned poet, novelist and prophet Margaret Atwood returns to Hay. This new collection of 15 stories explore the warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords. They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales. At the heart of the collection is a sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love – and what comes after.

There will not be a book signing after this event.

This year marks the 400-year anniversary of the publication of Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, known today simply as the First Folio. Arguably the most influential secular book of all time, when it hit bookstalls in 1623 it was a landmark in the history of printing and a costly object, and it has gone on to have an incalculable impact on language, education, publishing, the theatre, tourism and a host of other industries. The Associate Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Birmingham explains who put together the First Folio and why, and how its makers created ‘Shakespeare’ as we know him today. Dr Laoutaris’s talk is based on his book Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio.

Memoir, autofiction, a collection of fragments: Martin Shaw’s Bardskull can be read in a number of ways. An authority on mythology, Shaw is keen to liberate it from the library and put it back in the centre of our messy, fear-filled lives. Bardskull is built around three journeys into the heart of Dartmoor. From the deep myths of Dartmoor itself to Arthurian legends and folk tales from India, Persia and more, each story in Bardskull comes as a challenge and a threat. Shaw discusses the book, and reads from it, offering the audience the chance to make up their own mind about what, exactly, Bardskull is. Shaw talks to Rosie Goldsmith, journalist and Director of the European Literature Network.

The Magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck on 6 February 2023 in southern Turkey close to the Syrian border and was followed by powerful aftershocks. More than 50,000 people lost their lives in the region as buildings collapsed. Research is now being carried out by Turkish teams and other structural engineers with the aim of learning lessons from the earthquake and finding ways to improve the design of buildings and the construction process to make them more resilient. The successes of the buildings that are still intact and perform perfectly well are as important as the neighbouring buildings that have collapsed. Hear from one of those leading the research – Emily So, Professor of Architectural Engineering at Cambridge University, a chartered civil engineer and Director of the Cambridge University Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE).

Get ready for an energetic freestyle performance from wordsmith, hip hop artist and poet Karl Nova. He’ll bring to life pieces from his latest book, telling stories that are humorous, personal and inspirational.

The Curious Case of Karl Nova is Karl’s follow-up to his debut Rhythm and Poetry, which won the Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award (CLiPPA) in 2018.