The Shift’s founder among award-winning writers to speak at Hay Festival Digital

The Shift’s founder and managing editor Caroline Muscat will be one of over 100 award-winning speakers at this year’s Hay Festival Digital, an annual, much anticipated festival of literature and arts.

The festival takes place this year in the only location where people can come together without the risk of COVID-19 spread – the internet. The much-awaited annual festival, known as ‘the Woodstock of the mind’ will run from 18 – 31 May and include interactive talks and free live broadcasts.

Literary giants such as Margaret Atwood and Stephen Fry, along with other writers, global policymakers, historians, pioneers, and innovators, are coming together to celebrate the best new fiction and non-fiction while discussing and interrogating some of the world’s current issues.

Muscat will be speaking on the 26 May at 5 pm CET alongside writers Kapka Kassabova, Zsofia Bán, and Sophie Hughes – four of the contributors to Hay Festival’s, Europea 28 project, which brings together women’s visions for Europe in the lead up to the European Capital of Culture in Rijeka in 2020.

The Shift’s founder is among the 28 women – one from each Member State – chosen to contribute to ‘Visions for the Future’ of Europe. The organisers of Europa28 selected  28 prominent female authors, thinkers, writers and scientists across genres and generations, in a project leading up to a book published in March.

This is not the first time Muscat is speaking at the festival. In 2018, Muscat participated in a debate with Index on Censorship editor Rachael Jolley and son of murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Paul, where they discussed Caruana Galizia’s work and the release of the book Invicta: The Life and Work of Daphne Caruana Galizia edited by Joseph A Debono and Muscat.

This year, Muscat, along with Hughes, Kassabova and Bán, will bring four unique perspectives into the discussion on an ever-changing Europe, offering hope and insight into how we may begin to rebuild Europe, in a time of nationalism and isolationism.

On World Press Freedom Day, Muscat was awarded the US Embassy’s Woman of Courage award. In 2019, Muscat also received the International Press Freedom Award for Independence from Reporters Without Borders for her work against corruption with The Shift and for refusing to back down “despite massive pressure”.

To book a virtual place at a Hay Festival Digital talk, go to www.hayfestival.com and select any event.