Explore history, identity and more with Brighton Festival’s ‘Books and Debate’ programme

The programme comprises themes of creativity, memory and identity which are examined through music, landscape and our connections to each other and the past.

This year’s Guest Director, musician, DJ and broadcaster Nabihah
Iqbal invites audiences and artists to ‘Gather Round’ and celebrate collaboration, community and the joy of shared experiences. Her event series Glory to Sound reflects this ethos as she explores the ways in which music connects us to each other. Across two evenings, award-winning broadcaster Anita Rani (9 May) and one of the greatest modern poets, Linton Kwesi Johnson (14 May) will join Iqbal on stage as she leads her guests through their musical lives. 

On 16 May, Iqbal and British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and film-maker David Olusoga will explore the history of Brighton and East Sussex and through this lens, discuss what it means to be British today.

Poet Amy Key’s newly released and critically acclaimed memoir, Arrangements in Blue, looks at the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love, using Joni Mitchell’s seminal album Blue – which shaped Key’s expectations of love – as its guide. On 20 May, she will examine the unexpected life she has created for herself and the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss: loneliness, envy, grief and failure, with writer and performer Vanessa Kisuule.

Also on 20 May, journalist Kieran Yates introduces her first solo book, All
the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In. By the age of twenty-five, Yates had lived in twenty different houses, from council estates in London to car showrooms in rural Wales. Between a series of evictions, mouldy flats and bizarre house-share interviews, the reality of Britain’s housing crisis grew difficult to ignore. Drawing on years of research, she exposes the issues underpinning the crisis and charts the heartbreaks and joys of a life spent navigating the housing system.

Author, artist and architect Sabba Khan won the Jhalak Prize in 2022 with her debut graphic novel The Roles We Play. On 13 May, she will host a workshop to explain the principles of the genre, allowing participants to experiment with form and illustration and to start their own graphic novel. Later in the day, Khan will join British-Ghanian author and Costa First Book award-winner Caleb Azumah Nelson, whose latest novel Small Worlds (published on 11 May) explores dance as a form of self-expression, for a discussion about how memories and music can drive storytelling. 

On 26 May, writer-in-residence at Seven Sisters Country Park, Alinah Azadeh and guests host an immersive evening of readings, discussion, song and video to present a new body of work by global majority writers from We See You Now, a literature project inspired by the iconic and shifting landscapes of the Sussex coast. The landscape can be experienced through the writers’ eyes and ears from 14 May, with a walking guide from Seven Sisters Country Park Visitor Centre, or online on the Seven Sisters website – https://www.sevensisters.org.uk/ 

Munroe Bergdorf discusses her life-affirming, heartfelt and intimate book, Transitional, on 27 May. Through the story of one woman’s extraordinary mission to live with authenticity, Transitional shows us that we all transition, we all develop as people; it’s what binds us, not what separates us. Bergdorf shares how to heal, how to build a stronger community and how to evolve as a society out of shame and into pride.  

Additional highlights

Catherine Johnson, Patrice Lawrence and Victoria Princewill: Untold Stories:
Writing historical fiction for children and young people (7 May).

Award winning authors Catherine Johnson (Sawbones) and Patrice Lawrence (Orange Boy) discuss the joy of finding new perspectives through the voices of real and imagined characters. They will be in conversation with historical novelist Victoria Princewill, whose work is driven by a desire to write forgotten African women back into our world. For adults and young people interested in bringing the past to life.  

Rafael Behr: A Survivor’s Guide to Politics (10 May): Award-winning political columnist Rafael Behr discusses his new book Politics: A Survivor’s Guide with Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynsky. Behr will take the audience on a personal journey from despair at the state of politics to hope that there is a better way of doing things, with insights drawn from three decades as a political commentator and foreign correspondent. 

Place, Race & Being British: South Asian Book Club Live (13 May): London’s South Asian Book Club platforms writing from South Asia and its diaspora. For this event, founder Ali Arif will be joined by writers Umi Sinha and Hafsa Zayyan for an intimate discussion on identity, geography and what it means to be British today.

The87press Live (24 May): South-Asian, neurodiverse and non-binary-led independent publisher the87press hosts a night of poetry on 24 May. Home to The Hythe, an interdisciplinary e-journal for poetry and poetics, the87press regularly runs creative writing workshops in community-based and higher education institutions and curates events that bring together sonic and lyric subcultures. 

Polly Toynbee: An Uneasy Inheritance (28 May): Polly Toynbee uses the prism of her extraordinary family to examine the true state of class in Britain in her new book, An Uneasy Inheritance – My Family and Other Radicals. While for generations Polly Toynbee’s ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?

Festival of ideas

A collaboration with the University of Sussex, Festival of Ideas harnesses the transformative power of the arts and humanities to fashion new ways of thinking about the past, present and future.  

Acoustic Ecologies: Mapping Habitats (6 May): To mark The Sleeping Tree sound installation by arts studio Invisible Flock at Brighton Dome, a panel of speakers explore ways in which the field recordings for the installation were made and pick up the theme of loss of habitat that is so crucial to the project.

The Live Archive hosted by Erin James (8 May): Challenging assumptions about what an ‘academic event’ might look like, and who it can include, The
Live Archive seeks out new and exciting possibilities for the future of decolonising education and academia. Weaving together poetry performances and live debate, this is not your typical panel discussion. Organised by Sussex University and The Stuart Hall Foundation.  

Gardens, Botany and Histories of (De)Colonialism (11 May): Taking the Royal Pavilion and Garden as their starting point, Rob Boyle, Head Gardener at Royal Pavilion Garden, and Prof. Vinita Damodaran, Director of the Centre for World Environmental History at University of Sussex, explore the remarkable relationships between botany and colonialism. Organised by University of Sussex and Brighton & Hove Museums. 

Music for Girls (27 May): Join a panel of artists, writers and listeners for an afternoon of conversation and activities exploring collective music histories and lost memorabilia, hosted by the University of Sussex’s Music for Girls project. Expect nostalgia, mixtapes, and songs! 

Young readers (throughout Brighton Festival)

Well-known writers including former children’s laureate Jacqueline Wilson (21 May), bestselling authors M. G. Leonard (May 7) and Liz Pichon (28 May) and Thomas Taylor (14 May) will read their latest works and host workshops. Katie and Kevin Tsang will take readers on an action-packed adventure with Journey to the Dragon Realm (13 May) and actor and author Stephen Mangan and illustrator Anita Mangan will introduce children to The Unlikely Rise of Harry Sponge (28 May). For younger children, multi-award-winning authors Rachel Bright and Jim Field host a puppet show (20 May), while best-selling illustrator Guy Parker-Rees leads a messy arts and craft session (21 May). 

Brighton Festival was established in 1967 and is the largest annual curated multi-arts festival in England. The Festival takes place from 6-28 Mayand stages a host of music, theatre, dance, art, film, literature, debate, outdoor and community events in venues and locations across Brighton, Hove and Sussex.

Explore the full programme at https://brightonfestival.org/