The comedian Jimmy Carr has been announced as an early booking for this year’s Hay Festival, which runs from May 23-June 2.
The multi-award-winning stand-up, known for presenting television’s 8 out of 10 Cats, is one of a number of "earlybird" events that have been announced to whet the appetite of literary fans planning to attend the 32nd festival in Hay-on-Wye.
Others include TV presenter and Strictly winner Stacey Dooley, French flamenco group The Gipsy Kings and Scottish-Irish folk rock band The Waterboys.
Carr will be bringing his new show, Terribly Funny, to the festival on Saturday, June 1 while Dooley will be in conversation about her campaigning and filmmaking.
The Gipsy Kings and The Waterboys will be performing special late-night shows.
As another musical highlight for which tickets can be booked early, visionary musicians will bring the words and images of Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris’ award-winning The Lost Words to the festival stage with Spell Songs.
Peter Florence, director of Hay Festival, said: “There’s some joy and real energy here. As we begin to finalise the programme of debate and conversation, it’s a delight to offer up some great nights of pure pleasure.”
These six new events join a bold selection of sessions already announced, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winner Jared Diamond (Upheaval); Nobel Prize-winner Venki Ramakrishnan (Gene Machine); travel writers Robert Macfarlane (Underland: A Deep Time Journey) and Horatio Clare (The Light in the Dark, Something of his Art); award-winning novelists Leila Slimani (Adèle), Anna Burns (Milkman), and Markus Zusak (The Book Thief); children’s favourites Julia Donaldson (The Gruffalo) and Michael Rosen (We’re Going on a Bear Hunt); comedian and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig; and all-star performances of Diaries Live and Speeches Live.
Tickets for these "earlybird" acts are on sale now to Friends of Hay Festival at hayfestival.org or via 01497 822 629. Public booking opens on Saturday, January 26 at 8am.
Hay Festival is the world’s leading festival of ideas, bringing readers and writers together to share stories and ideas in sustainable events across the globe. Over 600 award-winning writers, global policy makers, pioneers and innovators are expected to appear at the late spring festival in events across 11 days, while HAYDAYS and #HAYYA programmes will give young readers the opportunity to meet their heroes and get creative.
The Festival site is free to enter, with ticketed events in 10 tented venues, plus a range of sites to explore, including the Festival Bookshop; the HAYDAYS courtyard; the Hay Festival Wild Garden; creative workshops in the Make and Take Tent, the Scribblers Hut, The Cube and the Mess Tent; market stalls, cafés and restaurants; and a new Serious Reading Room.
A new global Hay Festival project – Hay Festival Europa28 – will launch at the festival, promoting the sharing of ideas across Europe and beyond through specially commissioned lectures and essays by the continent’s most inspiring writers and thinkers.
Two free Schools Days will open proceedings on Thursday, May 23 (KS 2) and Friday, May 24 (KS 3 and 4), blending live performance, workshops and storytelling in specially curated sessions funded by the Welsh Government and Hay Festival Foundation. Over 20,000 pupils are expected to attend, while a host of education projects – the Beacons Project, Hay Compass, Hay Academy, Hay Levels, free tickets for students in tertiary education, and Hay Festival Scribblers Tour – will reach thousands more.
Hay on Earth, the festival’s sustainability programme, will start the festival on Thursday, May 23 with its annual forum, throwing a spotlight on the growing climate crisis and exploring sustainable solutions for rural communities, taking the theme: Food, Farming and Futures.
Visitors will be encouraged to explore the spectacular surrounds of the Brecon Beacons National Park in a series of new Wayfaring Walks and Mountain Warehouse Walks with expert guides and acclaimed nature writers.
Winners of the Hay Festival Medals 2019 will be celebrated on stage. Awarded annually since Britain’s Olympic year (2012), and crafted locally by silversmith Christopher Hamilton, the Hay Festival Medals draw inspiration from the original Olympic medal given for poetry. Past winners include Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, John le Carré, Laura Marling and Ahdaf Soueif.
Meanwhile, Hay Festival Creative Wales’ international fellow 2018-19, editor and writer Dylan Moore, will continue his global Hay Festival travels, joining the Wales line-up to present a series of interviews, lectures and workshops on displacement. Moore is editor of the welsh agenda, the magazine for the Institute of Welsh Affairs think-tank, and English teacher at Llanwern High School in Newport, Gwent. His debut book, Driving Home Both Ways (Parthian), is out now.
The full Hay Festival 2019 programme will be announced on Friday, March 29.