Six new conversations have been added to the previously sold-out Hay Festival Winter Weekend programme, responding to high demand for the festival taking place next month, 24-27 November.
Explore the full programme and book tickets now at hayfestival.org/winter-weekend.
Over four days, more than 70 acclaimed writers and performers take part in 52 events, launching the best new fiction and non-fiction, engaging with some of the biggest issues of our time, and spreading festive joy with conversations, candle-lit storytelling, film screenings, comedy, music and workshops.
Now in its 23rd year, the Festival’s in-person events will take place in Hay Castle’s Great Hall and Clore Learning Space, alongside spaces throughout the booktown of Hay-on-Wye, including St Mary’s Church, The Poetry Bookshop and Richard Booth’s Bookshop Cinema. More intimate than the spring edition, Hay Festival Winter Weekend sees the Welsh booktown’s independent shops, cafés and attractions offer a warm welcome to Festivalgoers within the stunning surrounds of the Brecon Beacons.
New events added include a special event for families with War Horse author Michael Morpurgo, plus investigative reporter Luke Harding on Invasion: Russsia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival; historian Alison Weir on Queens of the Age of Chivalry: England’s Medieval Queens; novelist Kamila Shamsie on her new book Best of Friends; mountaineer Leo Houlding on Closer to the Edge: Climbing to the Ends of the Earth; former Lib Dem leader Vince Cable on How to Be a Politician; and Katherine Rundell on The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure.
For audiences unable to attend in person, select events will be livestreamed at hayfestival.org/winter-weekend with Online Festival Passes on sale now. Meanwhile, all events will be available on the Hay Festival Anytime video platform afterwards at hayfestival.org/anytime.
Hay Festival CEO Julie Finch said: “This year’s Hay Festival Winter Weekend events sold out in four days – our fastest selling programme ever – and we are pleased to respond to this demand with additional events. Join us in-person or online next month, 24-27 November, to mark the season’s change and year’s end with a celebration of community, bold visions and hope. Writers, readers and performers will gather in venues across our booktown to share their stories and imagine the world anew, and we pass the closing days of 2022 with conversation, laughter, music and friendship.”
Hay Festival Winter Weekend is supported by lead sponsors Visit Wales and Baillie Gifford.
PROGRAMME IN DEPTH
Inspiring life stories lead the programme as brothers Manni and Reuben Coe share their memoir of hope, resilience and repair, brother.do.you.love.me, in conversation with actor Sally Phillips; climber Leo Houlding presents his memoir Closer to the Edge: Climbing to the Ends of the Earth with the first Welsh woman to climb Mount Everest, Tori James; Stemettes founder Anne-Marie Imafidon talks She's in CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech; Sali Hughes presents Everything is Washable* and Other Life Lessons and bookseller Shaun Bythell talks Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown.
Great storytellers take centre-stage with new work as classicist Natalie Haynes shares Stone Blind; Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez talks Retrospective; Kamila Shamsie talks Best of Friends; Charlotte Williams presents her autobiographical novel Sugar and Slate; and Carlos Fonseca discusses his contribution to Untold Microcosms, a Hay Festival project that sees 10 Latin American writers create new work inspired by objects inside the British Museum’s stored collections.
Poetry weaves its rhythms through the Festival as Yomi Sode presents Manorism; Olivia Harrison offers Came the Lightening: Twenty Poems for George; and 70 years since Dylan Thomas released A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Hay Festival international fellowHanan Issa offers a contemporary response, while discussing her new role as National Poet of Wales.
Music rings out from St Mary’s Church all weekend as Father Richard Williams opens the Festival with a performance of the 1922 horror classic Nosferatu; Welsh harpist Anne Denholm plays a one-off festive set; and Hay Community Choir and Hay Shantymen perform. There’s laughter, too, with stand-up from Mike Wozniak, comedian Richard Herring on his memoir Can I Have My Ball Back?, and a Festive Quiz to close the weekend’s events.
To commemorate the incredible life of former Hay Festival chair and filmmaker Revel Guest, a special screening of her film War Horse will take place at Richard Booth’s Bookshop Cinema, introduced by children’s writer Michael Morpurgo.
The past is reimagined as human rights lawyer Philippe Sands offers The Last Colony; Alison Weir talks Queens of the Age of Chivalry: England's Medieval Queens; one hundred years since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, Garry J Shaw presents The Story of Tutankhamun: An Intimate Life of the Boy who Became King; Herefordshire historian Heather Hurley talks Horse-drawn Tramways of the Wye Valley; and the death of The Queen is marked in a special event as Robert Hardman talks Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II.
Hay-on-Earth events explore the latest in climate science and debate while celebrating the natural world around us. CEO of Compassion in World Farming Philip Lymbery presents Sixty Harvests Left, writer Katherine Rundell offers The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure, Andrew Simms and Anita Roy talk Contagious Tales; and campaigner Guy Shrubsole talks The Lost Rainforests of Britain.
Global affairs are drawn into focus as a Saturday morning panel of Festival guests review the weekend papers, reflecting on the past year and looking ahead to 2023; meanwhile investigative reporters Luke Harding and Oliver Bullough talk Russia and Ukraine; and former Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable talks How to be a Politician: 2000 Years of Good (and Bad) Advice.
Interactive events for families and young people through the weekend include author and illustrator Rob Biddulph on An Odd Dog Christmas, along with a series of special workshops at Hay Castle.
Food writer Angela Clutton shares culinary insights and inspiration with Borough Market: The Knowledge, while the town’s cafes and restaurants open late to offer seasonal delights.
Extra sparkle to live events comes from the town’s Market Square as a special guest turns on the town’s Christmas lights, Friday 25 November, in what has become an annual Winter Weekend highlight.
After a transformative 12 months at Hay Festival HQ in which new CEO Julie Finch was welcomed, the transition into a fully-fledged charity completed, and an ambitious expansion of education and outreach work across Wales and the wider world began, organisers invite the public to share their visions for the Festival’s future in an open forum event to open Hay Festival Winter Weekend.
Hay Festival will also draw on public nominations to crown the Hay Festival Book of the Year following past wins for Deborah Levy’s Real Estate (2021), Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist (2020), Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five (2019), Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s Inventing Ourselves (2018) and Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane’s The Lost Words (2017). Nominations are open at hayfestival.org/book-of-the-year with a prize draw to win a stack of the year’s best books.
Explore the full programme and book tickets now here.