Hay Festival: Counting Down the Days

This weekend marks the beginning of Hay Festival, a celebration of literature, creativity and change set in the rolling hills of Wales which surround the world’s first book town.

I have splashed out for a pre-pitched tent with a blow-up bed in it in it (flashbacks of last year spent in a leaking tent too close to the floor still haunt me) which means one less thing to carry, and crucially, more room for books. It is impossible to come back from Hay without more books.

And now I am counting down the days. The programme is as wide and varied as it always is, crossing mediums and genres, key contemporary issues and new ways of thinking. There’s so much to see but I’ve pulled together a list of some of the talks and events that I’m most looking forward to.

Must-Reads

David Szalay introduces his propulsive and hypnotic novel Flesh (great title) which follows an isolated 15-year-old who finds companionship with his older, married neighbour. I am always interested in strange relationships and this novel sounds ripe with them.

More strange relationships: in London 1995, inside a flat, there is only Eily and Stephen, 19 and 39 lost in an all encompassing new love. But what happens when the outside, and their own pasts, begin to intrude. Eimear McBride will be discussing her intimate and experimental new novel The City Changes Its Face with Toby Lichtig.

Michelle de Kretser bends fiction, essay and memoir to her will in Theory and Practice which tells the story of a woman’s fascination with Virginia Woolf, delving into what happens when life smashes into art.

Cristina Rivera Garza’s new crime novel Death Takes Me features a poetry obsessed detective which flips the traditional crime narrative of gendered violence on its head: this sounds like the crime novel I have been waiting to read for a while now.

Visual art is brought to the fore by James Cahill in his book The Violet Hour. James will be discussing the underbelly of the art world, inclusion and exclusion with the Hay Festival President Stephen Fry.

Writers Guadalupe Nettel and Saba Sams are going to be discussing safety and the unexpected, control and danger, in their new books: The Accidentals and Gunk respectively. When an albatross strays too far from its home, or loses its bearings, it becomes an ‘accidental’. Guadalupe’s book is about what happens when lives are disrupted and we end up in the unfamiliar. Sams’ novel charts a complex relationship to explore love and desire, chaos and control.

The International Booker Prize celebrates the vital, and sometimes unsung, art of translation with the substantial prize money divided equally between author and translator. And Hay’s programme offers the opportunity to hear from the freshly announced winning duo just days after the announcement of their win.

Change

Hay is not just a festival of books, it is a festival of ideas.

Resistance is not futile. Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi will be arguing that journalists need to think differently about language – so that readers don’t feel hopeless. From the 2003 Iraq War – when millions marched against going to war – to the invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing occupation of Palestine, we see how narratives of ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ continue to be weaponised to justify war and repression. If we want to resist war and injustice, we need to resist the idea that resistance is futile.

Journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad has reported on stories including the various Wars on Terror and the Black Lives Matter protests. Watching the slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie, and that some groups of people will always be treated as less than fully human. Omar will be talking to David Olusoga about what it means to live in a West that has betrayed its fundamental values of freedom and justice for all, and whether it is possible to carve out a sense of hope and possibility with everything that is happening around us.

Debuts

My favourite series that Hay Festival runs is their Debut Discoveries series, a chance to hear from some of the most exciting debut authors in conversation with other writers. This is where I get my notebook out and build by TBR pile so I can head over to the festival bookshop and make sure my rucksack is as heavy as possible before I leave.

This year I’m particularly looking forward to hearing from Florence Knapp who will be discussing her new book The Names which looks at the ripple effects of domestic abuse. Florence will be delving into how the book came about, her writing process and imagining three different versions of her protagonist’s life.

Catherine Airey’s Confessions also sounds like a mesmerising read: a story of family, fate and survival that follows three generations of women from Ireland to New York and back, and investigates the enduring power of the past.

There aren’t enough funny novels out there which is one of the reasons I’m so looking forward to hearing from peace-building practitioner Nussaibah Younis, as she discusses her darkly comic coming-of-age novel Fundamentally about a professor who accepts a job rehabilitating ISIS women in Iraq. Nussaibah will be speaking to broadcaster, journalist and filmmaker Bidisha about exploring radicalism through comedy and what it’s like to be a first-time author.

Nussaibah is not alone in leaning towards comedy in her debut. Sanam Mahloudji riotously funny and moving debut, The Persians follows five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as their lives are turned upside down. The novel explores what it means to go from a somebody to a nobody, and what it means to live in America, a country where they don’t matter to anyone.

Irish author Roisín O’Donnell will be talking about her urgent first novel Nesting. It’s Springtime in Dublin and Ciara grabs the clothes off the line and straps the kids into the car, and drives towards a new life. But what does it take to start again?

Manchester-based poet, writer and producer Antony Szmierek will be presenting his debut book Roadmap, which features lyrics from his debut album, with additional poems, sketches and stories (we love a hybrid) and references the service stations he is all too familiar with after so much time on tour, and Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s sequel.

In booker-longlisted debut novelist Yael van der Wouden’s new historical fiction book, two very different women spend a sweltering summer together, and the whole thing sounds deliciously claustrophobic. She’ll be telling Tracy Chevalier more about that.

William Rayfet Hunter’s novel Sunstruck explores race, status and the parts of ourselves we risk losing when we fall in love. The book won the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize 2022 which is always a good sign.

A Room Above a Shop is love story about two men working together in an ironmonger’s shop and sharing a room upstairs during the decade of Section 28, set against the backdrop of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Author Anthony Shapland will be discussing the novel as well as his short fiction Feathertongue.

Favourites

There’s nothing like seeing authors you admire, whose books you’ve fallen into, stand in front of you and talk about words.

I read A Field Guide to Getting Lost on an appropriately long coach journey from Berlin in Germany to Talinn in Estonia, eyes moving between the pages and the thawing landscape. So I’m really excited about seeing non-fiction author Rebecca Solnit discussing her news essay collection No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain which traverses women’s rights and masculinity, democracy and the rise of the far right, in conversation with farmer and author James Rebanks.

Literary greats Nobel Prize-winner Abdulrazak Gurnah and Booker-shortlisted Elif Shafak are going to be in conversation talking about their approaches to writing, literature’s responsibility to presenting diverse perspectives and the potential storytelling to offer hope in times of crisis.

Dean Atta led one of the first poetry workshops I ever attended at the Roundhouse in Camden nearly a decade ago. He is going to talking with Busayo Matuluko about his new novel-in-verse I Can’t Even Think Straight, a YA coming of age story about coming out. These are the kind of stories I wish I’d had as a queer kid, the kind of stories that are so vital for young queer people to be interacting with.

If Dean delivered one of the first poetry workshops I ever attended, the brilliant Joelle Taylor was a close second. Her books Songs My Enemy Taught Me and C+nto are now well-thumbed and dog-eared on my bookshelf. And this year she is part of a star-studded lineup of poets and performers who will be reading Allie Esiri’s uplifting poem-a-day collection.

Oh, how I loved the sumptuous story of Chocolat, and Joanne Harris’s beloved Vianne is back. Set six years before Vianne opens her scandalous chocolaterie in the small French village of Lansquenet, Joanne will be discussing her new prequel with Julia Wheeler.

Bend it Like Beckham was a crucial part of my queer awakening, and actor Juliet Stevenson is going to be talking about her illustrious acting career, as well as her activism which focuses on refugees and displaced people, and why being politically active is so important to her.

On Film

We don’t just like novels here at t’ART Press. And this year Hay Festival is shining a spotlight on film. They have multiple film screenings scheduled throughout the programme of the festival, including free drop-in short film screenings curated by MUBI which appear regularly across the schedule.

Hay’s Book to Screen series is also giving a real moment to adaptations. The series includes a conversation with the makers of Netflix's newest literary adaptation Dept. Q. Actors Matthew Goode and Chloe Pirrie and writer and director Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) are going to be in conversation with journalist and writer Pandora Sykes, discussing adaptation, and the Nordic Noir genre. Later in the schedule, director and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation Gaby Wood are going to be discussing taking Deborah Levy’s intimate story of mother and daughter Hot Milk from book to screen and the collaboration that is at the heart of this process. Universally acclaimed The Salt Path by Raynor Winn – which tells the true story of a desperate couple walking the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path - is also being adapted into a major film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. Raynor, the film’s director Marianne Elliott and producer Elizabeth Karlsen will be at Hay discussing the adaptation process and sharing clips from the upcoming film.

As always, the festival’s programme promises to inspire and challenge, and this list only scratches the surface. In London, I pack an empty notebook, ready to fill it up with everything Hay has to offer.

View the full programme, and book your tickets, here.