Hay Festival 2025 Full Programme

Zainab Umar, vice chair of Book Aid International, is joined by authors Sita Brahmachari and Kit de Waal to discuss what is lost when people don’t have access to books.

In our rapidly changing world, the power of the book to teach us to use our imaginations, empathise with other people, seek knowledge and think critically, has never been so important. Yet for many children and adults around the world, access to books and libraries remains limited or non-existent – and in too many cases these vital spaces are under threat.

Brahmachari won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize with her debut Artichoke Hearts. She is Writer in Residence at Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants and an Amnesty International ambassador. De Waal worked for fifteen years in criminal and family law, and has written training manuals on adoption and foster care for members of the judiciary. Her first novel My Name is Leon was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award.

Join our celebrated pizzaioli for an entertaining, hands-on workshop that will teach you everything that you knead to know about how to make pizzas. Since nothing complements pizza quite like a perfect glass of wine, let us pair and enjoy Italian wine together with your pizza creations.

This 90-minute session includes snacks, a 12” pizza of your own creation and complementary wine throughout. Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

​A star-studded line-up of poets and performers read from Allie Esiri’s uplifting poem-a-day collection in this gala event. Award-winning curator and poetry host Esiri introduces each segment.

Simon Armitage is Poet Laureate, author of Blossomise and Dwell. Gillian Clarke was National Poet of Wales, 2008–16, and is author of The Silence. Actor Damian Lewis is well known for his performances in Homeland and Billions. Theresa Lola is a British Nigerian poet and writer. As the Young People’s Laureate for London, 2019–20, her poem ‘Equilibrium’ was added to OCR’s GCSE English Literature syllabus. Nina Sosanya is a British Nigerian actor with many credits to her name, including His Dark Materials and Baby Reindeer. Actor and activist Juliet Stevenson is well known for her film roles including Truly, Madly, Deeply and Bend it Like Beckham. Joelle Taylor is a queer, working class author whose collection C+nto & Othered Poems was winner of the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Polari Prize. She founded the national youth poetry slam championships, SLAMbassadors.

Two of Britain’s best-known broadcasters discuss their new crime novels and how their own careers have influenced their books, murders excepted.

Writer and Anglican priest Coles’s new book is A Death on Location, in which he returns to the village of Champton as a glamorous movie set takes over the area. As actors don their bonnets, gowns and crowns, a murder interrupts filming.

In journalist Vine’s Murder on Line One, late night radio talk show host Edward Temmis is let go from his job. Cast adrift, he finds himself helping Stevie, whose grandmother, a devoted listener, died in a suspicious fire. Working together, the pair discover Stevie’s grandmother wasn’t the only one of Edward’s listeners targeted.

Comedian Suzi Ruffell takes a funny and moving look at some of the big questions of modern life, from whether peaking in school messes you up forever to the best way – scientifically – to mend a broken heart.

Ruffell shares stories from her memoir Am I Having Fun Now? and discusses masking anxiety with musical theatre, her obsession with the Titanic, and coming out, falling in love and becoming a parent.

The award-winning stand-up comedian, writer, radio presenter and podcast host appears regularly on TV favourites such as Live at the Apollo and Mock the Week, and sells out headline shows at leading venues around the country.

Authors Agustina Bazterrica and Hari Kunzru reunite for a conversation they started at Hay Festival Arequipa, Peru in 2024 as part of the Hay Festival and British Council’s Equity Series that pairs authors from the UK and around the world.

Argentinian novelist Bazterrica’s The Unworthy is a disturbing dystopian novel about the House of the Sacred Sisterhood – the only refuge available after the world has collapsed – and the resentments of the women who live there. Kunzru’s Blue Ruin is about Jay, a rising star of the London art scene who was once tipped for greatness, but now lives out of his car and earns money delivering groceries, while a terrible pandemic rages.

The pair talks to Toby Lichtig, fiction and politics editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love – romantic and otherwise – was not for her. Her experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears, and saw her pursue addictions and short-lived romances as a counterfeit to the real love she craved.

Faye opens up about how she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness and came to realise that it was part of a much larger problem in our culture, where collective ideals of love have developed in a highly politicised and capitalist society.

In her book Love in Exile, Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately. Faye is also author of the acclaimed The Transgender Issue. She writes an advice column, Dear Shon, for Vogue.com.

What happens when an object of suspicion becomes a case of obsession? Winner of Best Director at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) returns with a seductive romantic thriller that takes his renowned stylistic flair to dizzying new heights.

From a mountain peak in South Korea, a man plummets to his death. Did he jump, or was he pushed? When detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il, The Host) arrives on the scene, he begins to suspect the dead man’s wife Seo-rae (Tang Wei, Lust, Caution) may know more than she initially lets on. But as he digs deeper into the investigation, Hae-joon finds himself trapped in a web of deception and desire, proving that the darkest mysteries lurk inside the human heart.

With nods toward classic Hollywood and Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Decision to Leave is a masterwork infused with elegance, ingenuity and a knife-edge precision.

“Sumptuous… an intoxicating spell” – Total Film

Artist and documentary maker Sir Grayson Perry talks to his vocal coach and voice expert Juliet Russell about what it means to find your voice, and about the human urge to make music. Five years ago, Perry embarked on a mission to find his singing voice, and revealed it in a performance as Kingfisher on the TV show The Masked Singer.

He and Russell talk about the power of emotional connection in performance, as well as what drives his creativity and curiosity. Perry, who won the Turner Prize in 2003, works in a variety of mediums but is best known as a ceramicist. He uses imagery and text to chronicle social concerns, his own formative experiences and to tell the story of his alter ego, Claire. Russell is a vocal coach, choir director and composer whose work spans the music, arts and entertainment industries.

Love on screen can often seem unrealistic, from its scenes of attraction at first sight and dancing spontaneously in the kitchen to falling asleep side by side – and looking great doing so.

But how do we create these intimate moments of connection in real life, and what lessons do we take, and abandon, from how we see sex and intimacy portrayed on screen?

Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien, who has worked on shows including Sex Education and I May Destroy You, and has created intimacy guidelines adopted by HBO, Netflix and the BBC, explains how she helps actors create authentic sex scenes. She discusses how we can use those techniques to rebuild a healthier connection with our bodies, create a safe space for exploration and rethink how we navigate sex and intimacy.

Historian and writer Philipp Blom talks to translator Daniel Hahn about the idea that human beings can subdue nature and rule over it. Born in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilisation, the idea of subjugating the Earth was included in the Bible, reached Europe through Christianity, and spread to the entire world through colonialism.

It is only with the climate crisis that it has become apparent that the subjugation of nature must be a self-defeating ambition. Blom discusses his new book on the topic, Subjugate the Earth, with Hahn.

One of Wales’ best-known musicians, Jamie Morrison, talks about turning his hand to fiction with his semi-autobiographical novel Wonderboy and The Life & Times of Drewford Alabama.

The book follows Andrew ‘Pop’ Morrison, who hits the big time with his band. But when his partying lifestyle takes a dramatic downward turn, the only thing he finds comfort in is the personal diary of Drewford Alabama. With only a name and mysterious messages on an empty page, will he ever find him?

Morrison is a musician, songwriter and producer, best known as the drummer in Welsh band Stereophonics. In his teens, he formed the band Noisettes and had worldwide success. Since 2017 he has been part of a new project called 86TVs, featuring The Maccabees siblings Hugo, Felix and Will White.

WritersMosaic director Colin Grant hosts this Salon reflecting on the woefully under-reported cultural impact of Black people who have lived outside of London. The metropolitan bias has cast other British towns and cities and their inhabitants, no matter their alleged race or class, in its shadow. Lanre Bakare’s We Were There challenges that dominance by incorporating a vastly broader range of Black Britons into the fabric of our national story.

Grant (from Luton) speaks to Bradford-born author Lanre Bakare, singer and writer Pauline Black from Coventry powerhouse The Selecter, Malika Booker, founder of the poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen based in Leeds, and Nottingham-based singer and musician Daudi Matsiko. Together they illuminate the radical groups of artists and pioneering thinkers who have remained largely unknown or at least unheralded in London.

A chance to see an unprecedented collaboration between BBC Radio 3’s award-winning Delia Stevens and three-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year nominee Will Pound, as they follow the creative evolution of the classical composers inspired by folk.

The pair combine the traditional instruments of Pound’s melodeon and harmonica with the dizzying array of Stevens’ percussion, and then let their imaginations run riot while paying homage to their respective musical roots.

Stevens’ work ranges from reimagining Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with percussion for Sky Arts, presenting her own BBC Radio 3 series Music and Machines and performing Avner Dorman’s prolific 360° percussion concerto at Prague’s ‘Last Night of the Proms’ with the Beethoven Academy Orchestra.

Pound has created touring projects questioning Brexit, featuring a traditional tune from every EU state, and has explored the history of Morris Dance with Martin Simpson and storyteller Debs Newbold in ‘Through the Seasons’.

Expect roaring swing, sassy vocals, fabulous funk and delicious Latin flavours from one of the UK’s finest big bands, teeming with first-call players and appearing under the musical directorship of award-winning band leader Pete Long. The band’s exciting brew of virtuoso ensemble playing with killer solo contributions from across all sections has been delighting jazz fans right across the board.

Their shows have made national press for their ability to change style and genre while maintaining that big band power. Settle in for an evening of first-class arrangements of classic hits from the likes of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, the Rat Pack and Benny Goodman!

British-Sikh comedian Daman Bamrah hosts a night of comedy with Desiree Burch and Huge Davies. Bamrah is a rapidly emerging comedian known for his topical writing, acute observations and imaginative storytelling.

Desiree Burch is an NY-to-London transplant. She quickly and firmly established herself as one of the UK’s breakout comic stars, winning the 2015 Funny Women Award. Host and voice of Netflix’s smash reality hit Too Hot Too Handle, she also recently hosted BBC2’s Live at the Apollo. Her TV credits include the BBC’s Have I Got News For You and C4’s Taskmaster.

Huge Davies combines a confident on-stage presence with dark humour, surreal material and his one-of-kind customised keyboard. His first show, The Carpark, received an Edinburgh Comedy Award Nomination for Best Newcomer, and on transferring to the Soho Theatre was featured as Time Out’s No.1 comedy show to see. His sitcom The Artists is on Channel 4.

Jump up and get down with the turntable master at our Friday night party! DJ legend Vertigo’s seamless mixes create an irresistible energy on the dance floor. Influenced by house, acid house and rave culture, his own unique sound mixes infectious basslines, deep beats and soulful melodies. His sets are a tribute to the golden era of house music, blending classic tracks with fresh takes on the genre. Grab a drink and lose yourself in the original rave ethos of unity, freedom and joy.