Hay Festival After Hours
Experience Hay Festival live in a city near you. Hay Festival After Hours events will tour the UK, widening access to the important conversations and performances that take place on our stages. This is a chance to experience the excitement of the Festival in one magical evening, a space where art forms collide and great minds meet.
Hay Festival After hours: Birmingham
– The Old Rep Theatre, Station Street, Birmingham. B5 4DY
Join us for a night that brings together some of the UK’s most compelling voices from the worlds of literature, journalism, performance and big ideas. After hours Birmingham dives deep into the power of art and thought to shape how we live, lead, and create — especially in times of uncertainty.
Casey Bailey is a writer, performer, and educator, born and raised in Nechells, Birmingham, UK. He served as Birmingham Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2022, using his platform to celebrate the city’s culture and resilience.
Casey’s second full poetry collection, Please Do Not Touch, was published by Burning Eye in 2021. His poetry pamphlet From This Soil followed in 2023, published by Broken Spine. His debut play, GrimeBoy, was commissioned by the Birmingham Rep in 2020. Casey’s poetry has featured in numerous anthologies, and in 2019, he was commissioned by the BBC to write The Ballad of The Peaky Blinders, which won a Webby Award in 2020. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education by Newman University in 2021 and received a Royal Television Society Award for his creative work.
"With Casey, we get to meet a storyteller as well as a poet, because he is honing a kind of cinematic and musical language.I'm so happy to see voices like his emerging from Birmingham.” - Raymond Antrobus
Birmingham’s Bradley Taylor, winner of the 2024 Roundhouse Poetry Slam, writes poetry that’s honest, funny, political and deeply human. Drawing from his debut collection, "You missed the best part". Taylor brings language to life in a performance that’s not to be missed.
“A brand new voice and a fresh perspective on the art of poetry and performance” – Craig Charles
One of the UK’s most influential thinkers, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and TED speaker, Margaret Heffernan explores how artists and creatives offer powerful lessons in thriving amidst unpredictability. Drawing from her 2025 book Embracing Uncertainty: How Writers, Musicians and Artists Thrive in an Unpredictable World she reveals how artistic thinking fuels imagination, innovation, and what it takes to excel in turbulent times. Her TED talks have been seen by over 13 million people and in 2024 she was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.
‘a timely, insightful book….Heffernan highlights what it takes to excel in turbulent times.’
What makes a genius? Who gets to be one—and why? In this witty and revealing conversation, journalist and author Helen Lewis discusses her latest book The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers with scientist, author and broadcaster Adam Rutherford. Challenging our cultural obsession with genius—and the often dangerous myths that come with it, what does society glorify, and what does it ignore? From Leonardo to Musk, Austen to The Beatles, Lewis unpacks the legends we construct around brilliance
Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her first book, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Guardian, Telegraph and Financial Times book of the year. She is the writer and presenter of the BBC podcast series The New Gurus and Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat, and co-host of Radio 4’s Kafka vs Orwell and Strong Message Here.
“Lucid, funny and fascinating” – Adam Buxton