Hay Festival 2013

This arts teacher was always a rule-breaker. At her school where more than 30 languages were spoken, she sensed urgent needs: mending uniforms, calling social services, shielding vulnerable teens from gangs. And she tailored each class to its pupils, fiercely believing in the power of art to unlock trauma, or give a mute child the confidence to speak. Time and again, she would be proved right. In 2018, when Andria won the million-dollar Global Teacher Prize, she knew exactly where the money would go: back into arts education for all, because she believes the UK government's cuts and curriculum changes are destroying the arts, while its refusal to tackle the threats of cyber-bullying, gang violence, hunger and deprivation puts teachers on the safeguarding frontline.

Peter, a brilliant scientist, is told he will lose everything he loves – his husband, family, friends. He has Motor Neurone Disease, a condition universally considered to be terminal. He is told it will destroy his nerve cells and that within two years, it will take his life, too. But face-to-face with death, he decides there is another way and using science and technology, he navigates a new path that will enable him not just to survive, but to thrive. This is true story about the first person to combine his very humanity with artificial intelligence and robotics to become a full Cyborg. His discovery means that his terminal diagnosis is negotiable, something that will rewrite the future. By embracing love, life and hope rather than fear, tragedy and despair he will become Peter 2.0.

Have you ever felt as if you’re losing your grip? Then you'll love Sally Parker, who's struggling to find the hero inside herself, when all she really wants to do is lie down. Her husband Frank has lost his business, their home and their savings. Their bank cards have been declined. The children have gone feral. And now the bailiffs are at the door. What does an ordinary woman do when the bottom falls out of her world? This is a life-affirming tale of failing, falling, and finding a way back up, from the comedian, actress and TV presenter.

Andy Bush is a writer, illustrator and broadcaster on Absolute Radio.

Tom Allen's No Shame is a candid and emotional ride of a memoir. The working-class son of a coach driver, and the youngest member of the Noël Coward Society, the author grew up in '90s suburbia as the eternal outsider. He writes with caustic wit about his childhood, adolescence, the family he still lives with, and his attempts to come out and negotiate the gay dating scene.

Pippa Evans is an expert at saying Yes – and No. She's a master of thinking on her feet, but has also had to learn how to go with the flow. In her book Improv Your Life she's passing on everything she's learned from her career as both a performer and teacher, so that you can take centre-stage in your life. By passing on fun exercises you can practise at home, she aims to help you reach your full potential.

The two share laughs with the comedian and satirist Marcus Brigstocke.

Two young people meet at a pub in south-east London. Both are black British and won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong. Both are now artists – he a photographer, she a dancer – trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence. Both a love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, the book asks what it means to be seen only as a black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength. Caleb talks to the author of I Am Not Your Baby Mother. Candice's new book Sista Sister is published in July.

He might have the fuzziest fur that scratches and scritches, and a very loud roar, but I know he’s the perfect dad for me! Take artistic inspiration from this lively new picture book and make your very own grizzly bear dad in an interactive storytelling and drawing event.

The Bold family are going green, reducing, reusing and recycling as much as they can. But not all of their eco-friendly ideas are welcome, especially when it comes to 'watering' the neighbours' front garden. Hear the brand-new book brought to life by author Julian Clary, and see the illustrations created live by David Roberts.

When Philip Pullman’s bestseller was adapted by Bad Wolf for HBO/BBC One, it was the ​highest rated drama launch on British TV in more than five years ​with over 9 million viewers. Executive Producer Jane Tranter leads a panel discussion with Dafne Keen who plays Lyra, Amir Wilson who plays Will and His Dark Materials Screenwriter Jack Thorne. Together they will be looking at the joys and challenges of bringing the series to life.

How have poets imagined language and how do these imaginings help us understand an essential tool of literature? Hopwood is the only woman to have won the three main prizes for poetry and prose in the Eisteddfod, Wales’ national cultural festival. She has been Children's Laureate for Wales and was awarded the Glyndwr prize for her contribution to literature. Her collection Nes Draw won the poetry section of the Welsh language Book of the Year Awards, 2016. Mererid has been awarded the Cymrawd Rhyngwladol Cymru Greadigol Hay Festival 2020-21/Hay Festival Creative Wales International Fellowship 2020-21. Dylan Moore held the post in 2019-2020.

By knowing the shape of our planet we can create maps, survey the oceans, follow rivers, navigate the skies, and travel the globe. This is the story of how we discovered what no one thought possible: the shape of the earth. In 1735, the good ship Portefaix sailed across the Atlantic carrying the world’s first international team of scientists to a continent of unmapped rainforests and ice-shrouded volcanoes. Beset by egos and disease, storms and earthquakes, mutiny and murder, they struggled for ten years to reach the single figure they sought: the length of one degree of latitude. Twenty-five years after the publication of Longitude, this tells the other side of the story, one of our most important geographical discoveries.

Actor and activist Michael Sheen will join the professor Daniel G. Williams and politician Leanne Wood, to discuss the life, work, and continued relevance of Raymond Williams, as a new centenary edition of his collected writings on Wales are published. Michael Sheen says, "Who Speaks for Wales is a truly landmark publication. It has had a profound effect on me and on countless others. The new afterword to this expanded centenary edition shows how Raymond Williams’ thinking is as important and relevant today as it has ever been." Williams noted that Welsh history testifies to a "quite extraordinary process of self-generation and regeneration, from what seemed impossible conditions." This discussion, ranging from 1920s Pandy to wartime Paris, from Extinction Rebellion to Yes Cymru, will be conducted with his words in mind.

How do we take the stigma out of mental illness? What steps can we take to enable us to speak more openly about our state of mind? Alastair Campbell (Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression) and Ruby Wax (And Now for the Good News) have both written and spoken openly about their struggles with depression, in the hope that it may encourage others to feel that mental health is no longer a taboo subject. Francine Stock is a writer and broadcaster.

When an Antarctic research expedition goes wrong, the consequences are far-reaching for the men involved and for their families back home. Robert 'Doc' Wright, a veteran of Antarctic field work, holds the clues to what happened, but he is no longer able to communicate with them. While his wife Anna navigates her new life as a carer, Robert is forced to learn a whole new way to be in the world. The novel unpicks the notion of heroism and explores the indomitable human impulse to tell our stories, even when words fail us. A meditation on the line between sacrifice and selfishness, this is a story of the undervalued, unrecognised courage it can take just to get through the day.

Toby Lichtig is fiction editor at The TLS.

A book about walking in ancient places, in the footsteps of the ancestors, reaching back in time, to find ourselves, and our place in the world. The academic, writer and broadcaster explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons – from their burial sites. Although we have very little evidence of what life was like in prehistoric times, we can deduce a great deal from the bones and funerary offerings left behind, preserved in the ground for thousands of years. Told through seven burial sites, this prehistory of Britain teaches us about ourselves and how we came to be on this island.

Iceland Foods is a £3bn business that is affecting real change in the supermarket. From restricting single-use plastic to eradicating palm oil from products, MD Walker's aim is to find purpose with profit for his business. He explains how we can all make genuine progress on sustainable initiatives while being realistic about profit margins, and our obligations to customers and employees.

Canadian journalist MacKinnon asks, what would really happen if we simply stopped shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption without triggering economic collapse? This question took him around the world, seeking answers from America’s big-box stores, the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia, and communities in Ecuador that consume at a sustainable level. When Covid brought shopping to a halt, his ideas were tested in real time. Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. And along the way, we have so much to gain.

Lucy Siegle is an author, broadcaster and writer on environmental issues.

We make thousands of decisions every day, from minute choices we don't even know we're making, to great, agonising deliberations. But when every decision we make is life-changing, the way we reach them matters. And for every decision, there is noise. Co-authored by three eminent thinkers, this book teaches us how to understand all the extraneous factors that impact our decision-making – and how to combat them to improve our thinking. Filled with new science, illuminating case studies and practical examples, the skills outlined in this book are relevant to private or public institutions, schools, hospitals, businesses, judges – and to us all.

Daniel Kahneman is known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. Olivier Sibony is a writer, educator and consultant specializing in strategic decision making. Cass R. Sunstein is an expert on administrative and environmental law. They are in conversation with Angela Duckworth, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies grit and self-control.

In a special event to celebrate the launch of the new Graham Norton Book Club podcast on Audible, sit down with the comedian, actor and broadcaster as he talks to fellow Irish author Marian Keyes (Grown Ups) and Pointless presenter Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club).

For hundreds of years, we have lived as if the Earth were infinite. We exploited new frontiers, exhausted their resources, then moved on. It's a pattern repeated in forestry, fisheries, mining and agriculture. Now we are transferring this destructive approach to technology, imagining there is an infinite capacity for renewable materials. Bioethanol and biodiesel can replace the transport fuels we use. Biokerosene can take the guilt out of flying. Heating oil and coal can be replaced with wood. But by doing this, food and fuel and industrial materials are in competition with each other. In reality, there is no substitute for consuming less and living within this planet's means. What are the ethical and economic shifts required to accept the finite nature of our world?

George Monbiot is an author, journalist and environmental activist. He is in conversation with the co-director of Green New Deal UK and Winner of the Global Citizen Prize UK’s Hero Award, 2020.

Bonnie Greer, American-British playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster, talks to trail-blazing Novara Media editor Ash Sarkar about a life in writing and activism. What has changed and what has remained the same? A unique view through the telescope of time from then to now and now to then.

Part of Lemn Sissay's George Floyd: One Year On series.