Hay Festival 2024

Writer and game designer Holly Gramazio – founder of the experimental games festival Now Play This and scriptwriter of the award-winning indie videogame Dicey Dungeons – talks about her debut novel The Husbands with bestselling author Naomi Alderman.

In The Husbands, Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband, and the evidence all says he’s right. Soon, Lauren realises that her attic is creating an endless supply of husbands for her: the hot one, the one who makes a great breakfast sandwich, the one who can calm her. But when you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good-enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one?

An evening workshop for parents/carers/guardians/teachers/interested grown-ups* with It Happens Education (ithappens.education) and Brook (brook.org.uk) discussing Relationships, Sex & Health Education (RSHE). Come and find out about the history of the subject, the big RSHE picture and look at some current UK data. What do we want for our young people? What do young people say they want? Why is it important to start these conversations at home? How should you navigate this tricky terrain as a family? We promise top tips, conversation-starters and lots of engaging discussions and activities.

Princess Mary was the adored only child of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and was raised in the golden splendour of her father’s court. But her world soon began to fall apart: the King wanted a son and heir, and her parents’ marriage was crumbling. Exiled from the court and her beloved mother, she sought solace in her faith but found the choices she faced would haunt her for years to come. Alison Weir fictionalises the life of Princess Mary, who went on to be known as Bloody Mary, in her new Tudor novel. She discusses the drama and tragedy of the royal’s life.

Poet Jackie Kay’s new collection reflects on several decades of her political activism, from her Glasgow childhood, accompanying her parents on Socialist campaigns, through the feminist, LGBT+ and anti-racist movements of the 1980s and 1990s, to the present day when a global pandemic intersects with the urgency of Black Lives Matter. Her writing brings to life a cast of influential figures – Jamaican model Fanny Eaton, muse of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England; singer and Marxist academic Angela Davis; and poet and civil rights campaigner Audre Lorde. Woven through are lyric poems on the loss of Kay’s parents: poems of grief infused with the light of love and celebration.

The QI elves and No Such Thing as a Fish podcasters James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski (authors of A LOAD OF OLD BALLS: The QI History of Sport) host a fun-packed, interactive event that delves into the world of sport, from Mayan footballing legends to Ancient Egyptian wrestling, Victorian ‘bicycle face’ to the unsatisfying spectacle of modern-day robot football. Find out what pigs’ bladders, oranges and a kangaroo’s scrotum have in common. Test your knowledge in the quiz, win some great prizes and hear some surprising facts and intriguing stories, including the psychology of football chants, pole-vaulting priests and professional pillow-fighting.

Pip Williams didn’t always love words, which is ironic given her bestselling and award-winning novels are both focused on language. She discusses both books – The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho – as well as the way in which she pursued words to understand their power to control and their potential to enrich. Williams also talks about her research in the archives of Oxford University Press, her efforts to bind her own books and the irony of writing about words when she still has trouble spelling them. She talks to Louise Adler, director of Adelaide Writers’ Week.

The Platform is a new space for young, emerging artists to share their work with Hay Festival audiences. Spanning a diverse range of art forms, The Platform aims to elevate and develop outstanding creative artists at the start of their careers. Join us to discover and support some of the best young talent working in the UK today.

Enjoy a night of laughter at the Festival’s Comedy Club, with MC Laura Lexx and comedians Shaparak Khorsandi and Lou Sanders. Comedian, author and actor Lexx has appeared on the BBC’s Live at The Apollo and comedy shows including Mock The Week and Celebrity Mastermind. Her debut novel Pivot was released in 2023. Khorsandi is a comedian, author, speaker and advocate for human rights. She’s appeared on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here and 8 Out Of 10 Cats, among many others, and her latest book is Scatter Brain. Sanders co-hosts Mel Giedroyc’s Unforgivable, is a previous Taskmaster (Dave/C4) champion and has toured her live shows to packed houses across the world.

Brought to you by Little Wander, the team behind the Machynlleth Comedy Festival.

Trolls are to be found on every social media platform, and few have as intimate an experience and knowledge of trolling than Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first disinformation and social media correspondent. She discusses her book Among the Trolls, in which she tracks down both trolls and their victims, trying to work out where people’s vitriol comes from, why the information battle threatens society as a whole and how people get caught up in trolling and misinformation. Spring presents podcasts and documentaries investigating disinformation and social media for BBC Radio 4 podcasts, as well as for BBC Panorama and BBC Three.

Two of Australia’s leading First Nations poets living today, Jazz Money and Ellen van Neerven, showcase their exceptional work and voices in this not-to-be-missed poetry session. The pair are among a long line of First Nations storytellers who have been truth-telling on the Australian continent for tens of thousands of years. Their role as Indigenous poets who are preserving and amplifying these stories is both personal and political. Money’s award-winning debut collection is How to Make a Basket. Van Neerven is author of Heat and Light and Throat, which won Book of the Year at the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in 2021.

Prepare for a unique evening of music and storytelling from musician Johnny Flynn and nature writer Robert Macfarlane. The pair have released two albums, the most recent 2023’s The Moon Also Rises, described by the Guardian as “uplifting and muscular English folk stylings, courtesy of Flynn, with ancient and modern themes interwoven in these co-written lyrics”.

Flynn is a singer, composer, musician and actor who tours with his own band and regularly composes for film, TV and theatre. He is currently appearing as Richard Burton in Jack Thorne’s play The Motive and the Cue, directed by Sam Mendes. Macfarlane is author of books including Underland and The Old Ways, and with Jackie Morris as illustrator, is the author of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells.