Biddulph, Shamsie and Morpurgo to headline Hay Festival Winter Weekend

Kamila Shamsie, Rob Biddulph and Michael Morpurgo are among the authors headlining this year’s Hay Festival Winter Weekend.  

The festival will take place between 24th and 27th November in multiple venues across Hay-on-Wye in Wales, including Hay Castle’s Great Hall and Clore Learning Space, St Mary’s Church, the Poetry Bookshop and Richard Booth’s Bookshop Cinema. More than 70 writers and performers including Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Katherine Rundell and Vince Cable will take part in 45 events across the weekend.  

Julie Finch, Hay Festival c.e.o. said: “Hay Festival Winter Weekend marks the season’s change and year’s end with a celebration of community, bold visions and hope. Writers, readers and performers will gather in venues across our booktown to share their stories and imagine the world anew. Join us in person and online as we pass the closing days of 2022 with conversation, laughter, music and friendship.”  

Brothers Manni and Reuben Coe will share their memoir of hope, resilience and repair in brother.do.you.love.me (Little Toller) in conversation with actor Sally Phillips, Stemettes founder Anne-Marie Imafidon talks She’s in CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech (Bantam Press) and bookseller Shaun Bythell discusses Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown (Profile Books).

Colombian writer Vásquez talks about Retrospective (MacLehose Press) while Shamsie discusses her new novel Best of Friends (Bloomsbury Circus) and Carlos Fonseca discusses his contribution to Untold Microcosms, a Hay Festival project that sees 10 Latin American writers create new work inspired by objects inside the British Museum’s stored collections.

Celebrating 50 years since Dylan Thomas released A Child’s Christmas in Wales (Orion Children’s Books), Hay Festival international fellow Hanan Issa offers a contemporary response, while discussing her new role as National Poet of Wales. There will also be a special screening of “War Horse” to commemorate the life of former Hay Festival chair and filmmaker Revel Guest, introduced by children’s writer Morpurgo.

Rundell will discuss The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure (Faber & Faber), while investigative reporters Luke Harding and Oliver Bullough talk Russia and Ukraine; and former Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable introduces How to be a Politician: 2000 Years of Good (and Bad) Advice (Ebury Press).

Interactive events for families and young people through the weekend include author and illustrator Rob Biddulph on An Odd Dog Christmas (HarperCollins Children’s Books), along with a series of special workshops at Hay Castle.  

Hay Festival will also draw on public nominations to crown the Hay Festival Book of the Year following past wins for Deborah Levy’s Real Estate (Hamish Hamilton) and Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist (Little Toller). Nominations are open with a prize draw to win a stack of the year’s best books.

Priority booking is now open for Friends of Hay Festival online. General booking opens at 9am on Friday, 30th September.

For audiences unable to attend in person, events will be livestreamed with online festival passes on sale now. Meanwhile, all events will be available on the Festival’s Hay Player video platform afterwards.