News, Blogs & Updates

Posted 12 November 2018 Read more

In this Armistice centenary year, Hay Festival invited poets from countries involved in the Great War to respond to poets and poems from their own cultures of the time. Performed in a special Armistice Poetry Gala earlier this year, the poems have today (Sunday 11 November) been released digitally...

Posted 11 November 2018 Read more

Posted 7 November 2018 Read more

Posted 5 November 2018 Read more

The Road Home by Rose Tremain is Hay Festival Book of the Month for November. Urgently relevant. Beautifully written. First published in 2007, just three years after Poland and nine other countries joined the EU, the novel offers a view of the UK through a migrant’s eyes...

Posted 1 November 2018 Read more

Posted 25 October 2018 Read more

Posted 24 October 2018 Read more

Now the Hay Festival Winter Weekend 2018 programme is online, it's time to get reading. Here's a list of all the books we'll be celebrating over the long weekend, 22-25 November...

Posted 12 October 2018 Read more

Roll up, roll up, and deck the halls! Hay Festival Winter Weekend (22-25 November) brings writers and readers together at the turn of the season for conversation, debate, music and comedy, in the heart of Hay on Wye. Find out more about what's in store...

Posted 10 October 2018 Read more

Posted 1 October 2018 Read more

One of the most remarkable things about this year’s Hay Festival Querétaro was the huge variety and success of the Mexican writers on the programme

Posted 9 September 2018 Read more

We are delighted to have the BBC back at Hay in 2018 with many of their much loved shows - from Radio 4’s Today to World News’ Talking Books - broadcast on TV, radio and online from the festival site.

Posted 1 June 2018 Read more

The YA Book Prize returns to Hay Festival to showcase the very best in YA literature.

Posted 31 May 2018 Read more

Felipe Restrepo Pombo is the British Council's Writer in Residence. In 2017 he was included in the Bogotá39 list of the best Latin American writers under 40, organized by the Hay Festival. He talks about the challenges of a journalist and specially of reporting conflict in countries such as Mexico and Colombia.

Margaret Atwood was one of his pick's of the programme. He was surprised to see her flanked by an entourage of the infamous handmaids and enjoys Margaret's devoted fans.

Posted 31 May 2018 Read more

Marking 100 years since the Armistice in November 1918, Hay Festival Press is publishing an anthology of specially commissioned poems from countries that participated in World War One. 

Posted 30 May 2018 Read more

Hay Festival and Bradford Literature Festival joined forces for the first time to launch a new pupil exchange programme, alongside a series of events specially curated by Bradford Literature Festival at Hay Festival 2018, celebrating the power of culture to help us understand the lives of others.
 
The new student exchange programme sees ten Year 9 pupils from Bradford attend Hay Festival for two nights this May, while ten Year 9 pupils from Powys and Herefordshire will attend Bradford Literature Festival in June. The exchange aims to expand and enrich both groups’ life experiences, encouraging engagement and empathy, and using culture as a powerful transformational tool. 

Posted 30 May 2018 Read more

A competition to celebrate Oxfam's #BooksChangeLives campaign, launched at Hay Festival today. Tell us about the book that changed your life to be in with a chance of winning signed books from Hay favourites. 

Posted 30 May 2018 Read more

This year’s PEN lecture at Hay was delivered by human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, President of the organisation that defends freedom of expression around the world.

Posted 29 May 2018 Read more

Where better to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Man Booker  than at the Hay Festival. Philippe Sands, Elif Shafak and Juan Gabriel Vasquez joined Gaby Wood to discuss the shortlist for for the Golden Man Booker prize.

Posted 27 May 2018 Read more

When the winner of the 2018 International Dylan Thomas Prize winner, Kayo Chingonyi, sat down to discuss his winning collection, Kumukanda, the result was a tantalizing hour-long insight into the mind of one of the brightest poets of our generation.

Posted 26 May 2018 Read more