News, Blogs & Updates

Hay Festival founder and director Peter Florence will chair the Man Booker Prize 2019, it has been announced today, alongside a panel comprised of: former fiction publisher and editor Liz Calder; novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo; writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch and pianist and composer Joanna MacGregor...

Posted 11 December 2018 Read more

UK outdoor retailer Mountain Warehouse will become the official camping and kit provider for Hay Festival Wales 2019 after a new partnership agreement was signed today, marking the festival’s first national clothing retailer collaboration, and covering events and digital promotion...

Posted 7 December 2018 Read more

Leila Slimani, Anna Burns, Markus Zusak, Jared Diamond, Venki Ramakrishnan, Robert Macfarlane, Horatio Clare, Julia Donaldson, Michael Rosen and Sandi Toksvig to appear at 32nd festival, plus all-star Diaries Live and Speeches Live performances confirmed...

Posted 3 December 2018 Read more

Hay Festival Winter Weekend closed Sunday 25 November 2018 after a four-day global celebration of ideas that saw thousands enjoy events across the "town of books".

Posted 26 November 2018 Read more

Inventing Ourselves by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is named Hay Festival Book of the Year 2018 on the opening day of Hay Festival Winter Weekend begins today, kicking off a four-day global celebration of ideas with writers, thinkers and entertainers, alongside a rich strand of workshops, woodland walks and town festivities.

Posted 22 November 2018 Read more

Fiction and dissent: Hay Festival has today announced the programme for Hay Festival Cartagena, 31 January-3 February 2019, with global literary stars, Nobel Prize-winners and internationally acclaimed performers leading a programme that encompasses 130 speakers in 150 events over four days.

Posted 21 November 2018 Read more

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