Hay Festival 2024

Start your day with an hour of yoga blending movement, mantra, meditation and breathwork. The classes support detoxification and regeneration – physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our daily yoga classes are brought to you by a collective of ten highly skilled practitioners, all local to Hay-on-Wye. Each practitioner has their own style, but with all you can expect a mindful, student-focused practice with clear cueing and functional sequencing.

Whether you need grounding and recharging before a busy day at the Festival, an opportunity to stretch and move your body, or simply an hour to focus on your breathing, these classes are open and accessible to all. Practitioners will adapt to different levels of experience, providing options for deepening or softening within poses so that each student takes what they need from the practice. Beginners and experienced students are most welcome. Yoga mats are provided.

Please contact Clare Fry at hello@larchwoodstudio.com with any questions relating to these classes. As capacity is limited, we recommend booking in advance to avoid disappointment.

A fantastic opportunity to see behind the scenes of this unique and historic building. Visit at a time of your choice during Castle opening hours.

Hay Castle’s executive director Tom True introduces the key moments and characters from the castle’s past followed by a continental breakfast.

Come for a wild swim in the Wye with adventure and wild swimming specialist Angela Jones. The author of Wild Swimming the River Wye is passionate about protecting and respecting the river, its environment and wildlife. She shows how to engage in wild swimming with love and respect, testing the water for cleanliness and observing when it’s safe, before leading a guided wild swim session. Beginners and seasoned swimmers alike will gain a wealth of knowledge, including tips on acclimation, water safety, equipment, technique, reading the river and undercurrents.

You will meet Angela on the banks of the river at By the Wye Glamping Site, HR3 5RS, located just past the main bridge into Hay on the B4351
(What3Words : lifestyle.waving.cavalier).

The session starts at 10am and ends at 12pm at the river.

There is no parking at the swim site, please park in one of the designated car parks around town.

Start your day at Hay Festival with our daily news review. Join leading journalists and special guests as they take us behind the headlines with insider perspectives, insights and an eye on what’s next. Strong coffee recommended!

Among today’s guests are Reverend Richard Coles, co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and author of the Canon Clement Mystery series, Dharshini David, author, broadcaster and Chief Economics Correspondent for BBC News, and Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, host of Not Just the Tudors podcast from History Hit and Chair of Judges for the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction.

American-Libyan writer Hisham Matar’s new novel is about three Libyan men in political exile in London, and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide. It begins in 1984, the year that officials inside the Libyan embassy in London’s St James’s Square fired a machine gun into a crowd of unarmed protesters. Matar’s earlier novel, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, about his father’s abduction by Gaddafi’s forces and the decades-long quest to discover his fate, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He discusses his new book with Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer.

Fiona Williams’ The House of Broken Bricks focuses on Tess and Richard; the former yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was while the latter fights to get his winter crops planted rather than deal with the discussion he cannot face. Williams discusses her story of a broken family, who might be able to heal as the seasons change, with novelist Ingrid Persaud.

A warden from the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park leads a walk through the beautiful surrounds of Hay-on-Wye. A local expert gives insights into this treasured landscape.

Hay-on-Wye is based within 520 square miles of beautiful landscape that makes up the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. The National Park is driving change to bring about a sustainable future, meeting our needs within planetary boundaries. Their Hay Festival series of walks take you into the town’s local environment while offering the opportunity to learn more about the Park’s work and its treasured landscape.

Join us for a recording of The Verb, BBC Radio 4’s poetry celebration and ‘language lock-in’, hosted by its kindly pub-landlord Ian McMillan. In our special festival editions Ian has invited a host of award-winning poets, writers and performers to join him on stage for a spoken word party. His guests include the novelist Kevin Barry, and the actor and writer Miriam Margolyes.

Illustrator Rob Biddulph sketches out a fun-packed and interactive session for all the family. Rob’s brilliant #DrawWithRob videos have inspired many to take up a pencil, and now you can join in live with a draw-along fresh from his latest book. The final book in his Peanut Jones trilogy, Peanut Jones and the End of the Rainbow, dazzles with magic, danger, friendship and art. Find out all about Rob’s journey from budding artist to award-winning picture book creator and Guinness World Record holder in this event fizzing with fun and creativity.

Meet Steve Antony’s mischievous new character, Cat. In his new book Cat Nap, this little cat needs a nap, but it’s hard to find time for sleep when you’re busy playing! Will he ever close his eyes? Curl up for the bestselling author and illustrator’s high-energy story time event.

Join Nathanael Lessore for an interactive, laugh-out-loud workshop-style event. Nathanael’s breakout debut Steady for This introduces us to wannabe rapper MC Growls. When a livestream practice goes horribly wrong Growls has to prove his talents, not just to the school but to himself. The King of Nothing is Nathanael’s latest book, which celebrates boyhood and is inspired by his own experience of the joys and challenges of growing up as a working-class person of colour.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven. And while you wait for your pizza to cook, you can decorate your own pizza box!
Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative: your imagination is the limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven. And while you wait for your pizza to cook, you can decorate your own pizza box!
Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

The Poet Laureate shares the new perspectives and energy he brings to a timeless subject in his newest collection of poems. Blossomise, published in collaboration with the National Trust as part of its annual Blossom campaign, celebrates the arrival of spring blossom and acknowledges its melancholy disappearance.

Why might an orangutan care which toothpaste you choose? What does your mobile phone have to do with wind turbines? And can your morning coffee really power a bus? Economics affects every aspect of our lives and there are huge changes afoot as the global green revolution speeds up. Dharshini David, Chief Economics Correspondent for BBC News, reveals the green changes already taking place in every aspect of our world, from sustainable materials and corporate greenwashing to industrialisation and global trade wars. David explores the industries of energy, food, fashion, technology, manufacturing and finance, showing how the smallest details in our day can tell a bigger economic story.

Authors Anna Funder and Sandra Newman discuss George Orwell, and highlight the women forgotten in his life and his work. Funder’s Wifedom is a non-fiction book about Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, whose literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work. Largely forgotten now, she is brought back to life by Funder, using newly discovered letters. Newman is the author of Julia, a retelling of Orwell’s 1984. The book explores state control over women’s bodies and the terror of totalitarianism. Newman was chosen by the Orwell Estate to write the novel and has the approval of George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair.

Palestinian writer Adania Shibli discusses her novel Minor Detail with poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley. A story about a young woman raped in the mist of the Palestian/Israeli conflict of 1949, the book was longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

The screenwriter Poppy Cogan talks about the adaptation of Hilly Jackson’s hit novel into a BBC television series.