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Maya Jordan talks to Richard Benson and Claire Malcolm

The Working Class Library: Live Podcast

Hay Festival 2026, 

Experience a live recording of The Working Class Library, a podcast that explores and reclaims working class people’s contribution to literature. Join hosts Richard Benson, author of The Valley and editor of The Bee, and Claire Malcolm, CEO of New Writing North, in their quest to establish a new catalogue of working-class books that tell a different story to the established British literary traditions.

For this live edition of the podcast they will be joined by special guest, Mid Wales-based Maya Jordan, author of Chopsy: Resistance Tales of a Working Class Woman. Together they’ll discuss the Welsh classic Queen of the Rushes by writer Allen Raine, which celebrates its hundredth birthday this year.

The Working Class Library podcast is a venture of The Bee, a new magazine of writing by working class writers, published by New Writing North.

Maya Jordan talks to Richard Benson and Claire Malcolm