Gurnah, Shafak and Fuller to headline Bath Festival

Authors including Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, Elif Shafak and Costa Prize winner Claire Fuller are headlining Bath Festival this year, joined by a host of debut authors and broadcasters.

Running from 13th May to 21st May, the festival will host authors and musicians in the city’s historic venues, including Bath Abbey, the Assembly Rooms and former Art Deco cinema The Forum.

Appearing in a series of events curated by author and Guardian chief theatre critic Arifa Akbar, Shafak and Gurnah will talk about their work, themes of home, Britishness, international fiction and post-colonial legacies.

Meanwhile, Fuller will appear in conversation with award-winning author Sarah Moss, discussing her latest novel The Fell (Pan Macmillan) asking questions about what the world has become since March 2020.

Debut novelists Julia Armfield, Susan Stokes-Chapman, Kasim Ali, Jendella Benson and Lizzie Damilola Blackburn also appear in the line-up.

Elsewhere, environmental campaigner George Monbiot will be speaking to author Max Porter about his vision of a new future for farming, food and humanity.

TV presenter Davina McCall will speak to audiences about the menopause, as she champions women’s health in her new book Menopausing (HarperCollins). Bath audiences will get an exclusive preview of the book ahead of its official publication.

Comedian Phil Wang, who went to school in Bath, will be talking about his memoir Sidesplitter: How To Be From Two Worlds At Once (Hodder & Stoughton), while singer PJ Harvey presents Orlam (Pan Macmillan), her new work, in a spoken word event in conversation with Porter. 

Broadcaster Justin Webb and author Richard Beard will join broadcaster Mark Lawson to discuss male power and privilege, life in Britain’s elite all-male boarding schools and its effect on the psyche of the men who end up leading the country.

The unofficial "Poet Laureate of Twitter" Brian Bilston will be reading poetry from his book Alexa, What Is There To Know About Love? (Pan Macmillan) which features poems about reading, literature and politics. 

Historian, author and presenter David Olusoga will be in conversation with Adam Rutherford, author of Control: the Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics (Orion).

Ted Hughes Award-winning poet Jay Bernard will perform their spoken word poetry and appear in conversation with Shon Faye, a former lawyer and bestselling author of The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice (Penguin). The event showcases the live literary platform Speaking Volumes, which supports underrepresented voices.

Ali Smith, Martin Bell, Clover Stroud, Mark Haddon, Monica Ali, Nicholas Crane, Tracy Borman, Karine Polwart with David Milligan, Torrey Peters, James Runcie, Daisy Buchanan, Marian Keyes, Viv Groskop, Nina Stibbe, Lucy Mangan, Cathy Rentzenbrink and Stacey Halls are also set to make appearances. 

“It was truly a delight and an honour to be invited to guest-curate a strand at the Bath Festival this year," Akbar said. "I have had a long working relationship with the festival and this curation feels all the more special in the light of that history – I have been an audience member, often rapt or moved, and always walking away inspired. In former incarnations as journalist, moderator, trustee and punter, I picked up a keen sense of excitement the programme unfailingly sparked in the room. Now I am curating a strand of five events to run across the opening weekend, and I hope they will spark just as much excitement in you."