Across the weekend I am there I visit Hay, the world’s first book town, traipse around exhibitions and second hand shops and markets, soaking in the buzz. At the festival, I buy too many books at the festival’s sprawling Oxfam stall and read them in the sun, Hay’s signature colourful festival flags shifting in the breeze around me. As always the slice of Hay that I sample is rich on the tongue, the flavours layered and complex, lingering.

Every year white tents and hordes of readers descend on Wales for the Hay Festival. They hear their favourite authors discuss their books, discover new writers and buy too many books in Hay-on-Wye, the World’s First Book Town. And I will be one of them, notebook and tote bag ready to be filled. It’s a packed programme, inviting authors, artists, performers and thinkers from across the world. So I’ve highlighted some of the talks I’m most looking forward to this year for you,

The thin white body of the woman floated face down in the dark water. Her hands drifted weightlessly against the algae-slick brick side of the canal as though feeling for a door on which to knock, a door that was not there. The short crop of bleach-blonde hair was muddied by aquatic weeds, a braid of green snaking down her bare spine and into the discoloured cotton underwear that lay translucent against her skin. On either side of her torso, just visible from above as the wat

I’m in the back of an Uber on a loop road at night that I have never seen before. I see the driver’s eyebrows in the rearview mirror and try to keep up a nonchalant attitude that won’t give me away. I look longingly out every window. The driver gestures toward his window. “You see out there?” It’s too dark to see anything in particular, but I nod anyway. He becomes grave with unnatural quickness. “Do not ever go there.” “Oh, really?” I say, still trying not to draw attentio