100 days to go until popular Powys festival returns

The popular festival takes place this year from May 26 to June 5 in the Powys town of Hay-on-Wye and will be returning for its first in-person spring event since 2019.

A total of 22 early-bird events are on sale now at hayfestival.org/wales with the full programme scheduled for release to friends of Hay Festival on April 5 and on general sale on April 8.

Hay Festival is the world’s leading festival of ideas, bringing readers and writers together in sustainable events to inspire, examine and entertain.

The festival programme will launch the best new fiction and non-fiction, while offering insights and debate around some of the biggest issues of our times in a programme of conversations featuring more than 600 award-winning writers, policy makers, pioneers and innovators.

The festival’s 10@10 series will showcase debut writers at 10am each morning on site, while a partnership with Publishing Wales spotlights Welsh publishers and their work on the global stage.

Collaborations with eight leading universities will showcase the latest research in the arts and sciences in a ‘Lunchtime Lecture’ series, while festival partners the Booker Prize, the Royal Society, British Council, the TLS, Prospect, BookAid International, Hay Pride, Hay Music, the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, Woodland Trust, Nature Springer, Kew Gardens and Empathy Lab will feature throughout the programme.

A series of #HayFestival100 events on site will explore the iconic publishing year of 1922 and the century of literature that has followed, including discussions and performances of James Joyce’s Ulysses and TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. Meanwhile, the public will be encouraged to share the books that have most influenced them from this past century of publishing.

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee will be marked with a series of conversations on women and power, while anniversaries of the BBC, Marcel Proust and Ferdinand Magellan will be reflected in discussions.

Lunchtimes at St Mary’s Church will be given over to live music, Hay Castle will be transformed into an open air space for daily performances and late nights will be given over to a dynamic programme blending music and comedy with theatre and poetry.

HAYDAYS events for families give young readers the opportunity to meet their heroes and get creative, while the Programme for Schools on May 26 (KS2) and May 27 (KS3&4) gives teachers and pupils free access to festival inspiration.

The BBC returns, bringing some leading programmes and podcasts in free events, while a selection of main-stage sessions will be live-streamed via the festival’s Hay Player video and audio platform.

Hay Festival international director Cristina Fuentes La Roche said: “Our 35th annual event in Wales, Hay Festival 2022 is going to be a return to remember and we look forward to welcoming friends – old and new – to our revamped festival site this May.

“As we put the finishing touches to this year’s line-up, we’re excited to preview some of this year’s themes: a promise of spring and a spark of hope for the year ahead.”

Novelists Caryl Lewis (Drift), Julian Barnes (Elizabeth Finch), Julian Clary and David Roberts (The Bolds Go Green) join the line-up to discuss their new work, while Deborah Levy talks her living autobiography series, and Bernardine Evaristo presents her manifesto.

There are performances from the ‘first lady of folk’ Kate Rusby and comedians Simon Amstell and Reginald D Hunter, along with a conversation with Jarvis Cocker on his memoir Good Pop, Bad Pop, while a new collaboration with Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour sees a run of nine performances of Julius Caesar in a specially commissioned open-air theatre at the newly re-opened Hay Castle.

Events will take place once more at the main festival site on Dairy Meadows, in St Mary’s Church, and in a new Festival theatre in the grounds of Hay Castle.

The main Festival site will remain free to enter, with a range of pop-ups to explore, including the Festival Bookshop, HAYDAYS courtyard, Wild Garden, Make and Take Tent, a host of exhibitors and market stalls, cafés and restaurants.

Winners of the Hay Festival Medals 2022 will be crowned. Past winners include Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, George Monbiot, John le Carré, Laura Marling, Emerald Fennell and Ahdaf Soueif.

While the countdown to Hay Festival is just beginning, festival events further afield are already in full swing. This week, Hay Festival Scribblers Tour continues to take writers direct to schools across Wales in free events featuring novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave, spoken word artist Steven Camden, actor, playwright, screenwriter and director Manjeet Mann and children’s author, performance poet and playwright Joseph Coelho.

A special gala event to celebrate the 35th anniversary year of Hay Festival will take place in London on April 7 as writers and performers share the literary works that have most inspired them over the years along with anecdotes from their favourite festival moments.

Tickets are available now at www.hayfestival.org/p-18658-hay-festival-tales.aspx.

For more information visit hayfestival.org/wales.