Hay Festival 2023

Get your Hay day off to a brilliant start with our daily Ready, Steady, Music workshops! With different activities each day, these interactive, fun-filled sessions for mini musicians will have you tapping sticks, roaring like dinosaurs, flying with unicorns, dancing with scarves, playing with parachutes and much more. Come and meet our puppets, explore our instruments and be accompanied by the beautiful sound of the cello.

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.

A real ambassador and a fictional one meet to discuss the world of diplomacy in this event, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy. Jane D Hartley, the United States Ambassador to the UK, and Keri Russell, who plays the American ambassador in the TV series The Diplomat, speak about international relations, power and all those official receptions.

The internationally acclaimed Irish novelist’s Prophet Song won the Booker Prize 2023. On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish answers her door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police. They’re here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling. With literary journalist Alex Clark, Lynch discusses his devastating vision of a country at war and his deeply human portrait of a dystopia that could be just around the corner.

Mexican writer Aura García-Junco and British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad talk to translator Daniel Hahn about writing on both sides of the Atlantic, in a continuation of a conversation that was held at Hay Festival Querétaro 2023, in Mexico. García-Junco is an author, screenwriter and occasional translator who, in 2021, was named by Granta magazine as one of the best young writers in the Spanish language. Her fourth book May God Blast the Woman Who Writes About Me has just been published in English. Hammad was included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023 list. She is author of Enter Ghost, about a woman who returns to Palestine after years away from her family’s homeland.

The geneticist Adam Rutherford explores how indigenous stories of the natural world are entangled with scientific understanding of the environment. He’s joined by Robin Wall Kimmerer the botanist and Native American, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass. The ecologist and hedgehog expert Hugh Warwick investigates the thorny issue of invasive species, and killing in the name of conservation, while the writer Olivia Laing goes in search of a garden sanctuary, and the long, and sometimes troubled, history of making paradise on earth.

Find out how families begin and how you become a part of your family, with award-winning GP and presenter Dr Amir Khan (Good Morning Britain, You Are What You Eat). Dr Khan brings his incredible knowledge, and passion for sharing it, to the question of where babies come from and what happens to them next.

Delve into the secret world of wizardry with psychologist and Member of the Inner Magic Circle Professor Richard Wiseman. He reveals how learning magic tricks can boost your confidence, social skills, creativity, happiness and much, much more. Experience the world’s greatest optical illusions, have fun discovering how to perform magic, uncover the secret science of sorcery, and find out how to transform a tea towel into a chicken!

Find out how to make a picture book with award-winning author/illustrator Mariajo Ilustrajo. You’ll have the chance to create one of your own with Mariajo in this interactive workshop featuring her newest picture book I Love Books. Discover how she goes about creating them, learn how to draw the characters from I Love Books and decide for yourself the order the pages will go in. What colours will you choose for your drawings?

Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to draw along in this event.

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.

From the former Conservative Cabinet minister and co-presenter of 2022’s hit podcast The Rest is Politics, a searing insider’s account of ten extraordinary years in Parliament. From 2010 to 2019, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister – before resigning from a Conservative Party he barely recognised. Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow and inadequate our democracy and government had become, with cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence running rampant. Stewart talks to TLS Fiction and Politics Editor Toby Lichtig.

From the mystery of quantum physics all the way to the horrors of disruptions to world peace, we make the mistake of thinking in terms of individual entities. We forget that entities are made by their relations. Italian theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli suggests that trying to make sense of the world in terms of relations can help us make better sense of reality on all its levels.

Three experts discuss cultural exchange across the world. Wanjiru Koinange is a Kenyan writer and entrepreneur, founder of Book Bunk, which aims to change Nairobi by restoring some of the city’s most iconic public libraries into sites of inclusivity, heritage, public art, collective memory, knowledge production, shared experiences and cultural exchange. She is author of The Havoc of Choice. Nigerian poet and author Lola Shoneyin is a publisher, festival organiser and author of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Colombian writer Velia Vidal is a festival director, author of Tidal Waters and also a contributor to Untold Microcosms: Latin American Writers in the British Museum. In conversation with Georgina Godwin.

This versatile and “virtuosic” (Sunday Times) piano trio travel around the globe performing their very extensive repertoire. They also broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 3. In the acoustically excellent setting of St Mary’s Church, Darragh Morgan (violin), Tim Gill (cello) and Mary Dulleah (piano) perform Judith Weir: Piano Trio Two and Franz Schubert: Piano Trio No 2 in E-flat major.

In 2019, DJ Day Day decided to make a mood board. A statement of intent. This ‘aspirational story board’ included logos of the BBC 1Xtra, award ceremonies and festivals; most of this he has achieved since. Join DJ Day Day as he shares the power of the stories you tell yourself.

Meet Jack-Jack, the world’s coolest dog, who looks after orphaned chimpanzees in Africa; he’s about to embark on his biggest adventure ever. “I spend my days playing with baby chimps. When I meet Ben, suddenly, I have more baths than ever (previously none). I wave goodbye to my pet fleas, and prepare to fly thousands of miles. I’ve never been on a lead or in a car, so what will an aeroplane be like?”

Ruchira Gupta tells the courageous story of a young girl in India who faces being sold into the sex trade by her father to repay his loans. After a chance meeting with a kung fu instructor, 14-year-old Heera realises there is another way – using her body to protect herself and those she loves. So when her best friend from school goes missing, Heera embarks on a daring rescue mission that will take her all the way to New York.

Gupta is founder-president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an anti-sex trafficking organisation that has helped thousands of girls and women in India leave a life of forced prostitution. She is a social justice activist, feminist campaigner, Emmy Award-winning documentarian and professor at New York University who has dedicated her life to creating a world where no child is bought or sold. I Kick and I Fly is her debut novel.

Find out how to make a picture book with award-winning author/illustrator Mariajo Ilustrajo. You’ll have the chance to create one of your own with Mariajo in this interactive workshop featuring her newest picture book I Love Books. Discover how she goes about creating them, learn how to draw the characters from I Love Books and decide for yourself the order the pages will go in. What colours will you choose for your drawings?

Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to draw along in this event.

Enjoy a half-hour open air performance between events. A crew of local landlubbers singing rollicking, traditional sea shanties in a cappella three-part harmony, as well as other songs on a nautical theme. Enjoyment is guaranteed or else you’ll walk the plank!

Hay Shantymen have been together for over seven years, raising more than £10,000 for the RNLI. They’ve performed widely, including Latitude and Falmouth International Shanty Festival. In 2023 they wrote a shanty of their own (‘Seaweed Revolution’), performed at the Natural History Museum in London. Their album Songs from the Shed is available at hayshantymen.com.

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be remembered for being the first woman in the role in that country’s history, but even more so for her misogyny speech to parliament, in which she called out politician Tony Abbott for his hypocrisy and sexism. She talks to human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy about one of the most iconic speeches in modern politics, her career in the Australian government and what is still to be achieved when it comes to equality.

A Brief History of Seven Killings exploded onto the literary scene in 2014, winning the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Ten years after its publication, Marlon James presents a new edition exploring the ongoing cultural and historical fascination with Bob Marley. In Jamaica, 1976, seven gunmen storm Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The superstar survives but the gunmen are never caught. James’s novel reimagines an event that has become a modern myth, as he chronicles the lives of slum kids, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists and even the CIA. James talks to novelist and literary director Adam Biles of Shakespeare and Company. A Brief History of Seven Killings is the Hay Festival Book Club pick for June.

Ideas and stories are limitless: our planet’s resources are not. The combined climate, biodiversity and nature emergencies are an existential threat to us all. So we all have a responsibility to help find solutions. Throughout Hay Festival we invite participants to contribute their ideas and concerns and to help build a combined mobilisation message for the future. Today we launch that message, encouraging everyone to be part of the change needed to secure a safe outcome for future generations.

Actor Julian Rhind-Tutt has appeared in Green Wing, Notting Hill and The Witcher. Documentary filmmaker Jack Harries is co-founder of Earthrise Studio. Environmental activist Jane Davidson is the former Welsh Government minister for Education, Environment and Sustainability. In conversation with Nicola Cutcher, investigative journalist, documentary maker, and freelance writer.

Do you ever wonder where the stuff around you all came from? No, not from the shops. I mean, who had the amazing idea of making video games or the annoying idea of building a school? In this laugh-out-loud event with the record-breaking and extremely handsome Adam Kay and Henry Paker, you’ll learn about everything ever invented, from the daft to the disgusting to the downright dangerous. You’ll discover the queen who pooed on the first ever toilet, how velcro was invented by a dog and why the Ancient Greeks wiped their bums on dinner plates, as well as 48,762,851,208 other facts. (Approximately.)

Worldbuilding is the key to captivating stories in films, television and gaming as well as books. You’ll have fun working together in this interactive session to help you create your own unique world. Gita Ralleigh is the author of The Destiny of Minou Moonshine and The Voyage of Sam Singh, both magical adventures set in a parallel colonial India.

Do you ever get stuck for a story idea, or when you’ve started writing quickly run out of steam? Author Emma Carroll (The Somerset Tsunami, The Week at World’s End) shares tips on how to fire your imagination in this fun, interactive workshop, searching out potential ideas and inspirations to encourage you to keep writing. You’ll consider how the unique experience of being you can be useful when writing, as well as trying out some short exercises to warm up your creativity so you’re ready to put pen to paper.

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.