l-r Writing on the Wall Directors Mike Morris and Madeline Heneghan.
There are festivals that entertain, and festivals that feel as though they are tuned directly into the nervous system of the times. This May, Liverpool plays host to one of the latter. WoWFEST26, themed New World Disorder, arrives with urgency, intelligence and a refusal to look away, a writing and ideas festival that understands that words do not simply describe the world, they argue with it.
Now entering its latest iteration as Liverpool City Region’s longest running writing festival, WoWFEST has built a reputation for bold programming, cultural confidence and a deep commitment to putting writing at the centre of civic life. This year’s theme could hardly be timelier. From democratic backsliding and culture war censorship to AI anxiety, climate emergency and deepening inequality, New World Disorder gives a name to the anxious static of the present moment, then invites audiences to interrogate it together.
As Madeline Heneghan, LCRDP Board Culture Representative amd Writing on the Wall Co Director, puts it:
“Across the UK, people are searching for spaces where ideas can be tested openly, where complexity is not reduced to slogans, and where culture helps us understand how we got here and where we might go next. WoWFEST speaks to that national moment, but it does so in a way that is rooted in people, place and lived experience. It is not about telling audiences what to think, it is about creating the cultural conditions where thinking together becomes possible again.”
Just as importantly, WoWFEST is not a festival of despair. It is a festival of conversation, imagination and resistance, powered by writers, artists and thinkers who believe that alternative futures are not abstract ideas, but something already being shaped through language, solidarity and creativity.
MAKING SENSE OF THE MESS
At its best, WoWFEST does not shout slogans. It gathers people into rooms, and online spaces, and lets language do its careful, disruptive work. Across May, the programme moves fluently between literature, performance, politics and lived experience, offering audiences more than hot takes. What it delivers instead is texture, testimony and thoughtful urgency.
Across the programme, WoWFEST26 brings together a breadth of culturally resonant voices whose work spans literature, performance, music and political thought. Legendary poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson appears in conversation reflecting on art, resistance and the cultural legacies of struggle; acclaimed actor and writer Cathy Tyson takes part in Black Women Speak Volumes, centring Black British women’s history and testimony; and celebrated novelist Colm Tóibín joins the festival for an evening exploring fiction, memory and displacement. Together, these events signal the festival’s reach, seriousness and connection to audiences across the Liverpool City Region and beyond.
Internationally acclaimed writer and activist Rebecca Solnit also appears online in conversation around her new book The Beginning Comes After the End. Drawing on decades of activism and cultural commentary, Solnit explores what she calls a quiet, patient revolution unfolding beneath the noise of crisis culture. It is a fitting centrepiece for the programme, intellectually bracing, morally serious and unexpectedly galvanising.
Elsewhere, contemporary fiction meets dystopian unease when bestselling author Juno Dawson discusses her new novel Survival Show. Set in a sinister reality television landscape, the discussion ranges across media manipulation, exploitation and the cost of visibility, offering a sharp reminder that political writing often arrives through storytelling rather than polemic.
CULTURE AS RESISTANCE
One of WoWFEST’s great strengths is its expansive understanding of resistance. This year’s programme places art, music and performance at the heart of political life.
TS Eliot Prize winner Joelle Taylor appears twice across the festival. In conversation with fellow artists, she explores class, creativity and working-class resilience in the arts. Later, Taylor brings her searing new poetry collection Maryville to the stage in a powerful live performance at Philharmonic Hall. Charting fifty years of lesbian counterculture, the production blends poetry, visuals and direction from Neil Bartlett to create one of WoWFEST26’s most anticipated live moments.
Music and memory intertwine in A Reason to Sing, where Chilean born, Liverpool based artist Francisco Carrasco explores the revolutionary Nueva Canción movement. Blending live performance, storytelling and archival material, Carrasco traces how music became a vehicle for resistance, exile and solidarity. It is global history brought vividly into the present and anchored firmly in Liverpool’s own internationalist traditions.
Click the image above to view the full programme.
POWER, PROTEST AND DEMOCRACY
Several events take a clear-eyed look at power, protest and the fragile state of democratic space. Discussions on civil liberties sit alongside firsthand accounts of international struggle and solidarity, placing lived experience at the centre of urgent debates.
A special event marking forty years since the Chornobyl disaster brings together fiction, poetry and memoir to explore its long-term human legacy, displacement, memory and ecological grief. Elsewhere, the festival opens with The Monster, Capital, a genre bending literary event that imagines capitalism itself as something monstrous and unsettling, playful and dark in equal measure.
Throughout the programme, political complexity is met with nuance rather than certainty, and with curiosity rather than outrage.
VOICES ROOTED IN PLACE
For all its global reach, WoWFEST remains deeply grounded in Liverpool City Region. Local history, working class culture and community writing run through the programme, reminding audiences that big ideas are always shaped by place.
Liverpool writer Tony Wailey launches his latest work, weaving generations of family life through the rhythms of a port city shaped by movement, labour and memory. Community driven events such as the Writer’s Bloc sharing session bring new local writing into the spotlight, connecting the broader festival theme back to everyday acts of creativity across the region.
The festival’s venues reflect this democratic spirit. From grassroots cultural spaces like The Black E to iconic institutions including Philharmonic Hall, libraries and community centres, WoWFEST travels across the city, inviting audiences to move with it.
WHY WOWFEST, WHY LIVERPOOL, WHY NOW
Liverpool has always been a city that argues back, through music, writing, humour and solidarity. WoWFEST feels inseparable from that tradition. New World Disorder offers not neat conclusions, but something more valuable, a space to listen, think, debate and imagine alongside others.
For visitors seeking a cultural experience that goes beyond sightseeing, one that feels alive, urgent and intellectually charged, WoWFEST26 is a compelling reason to be in Liverpool this May. Bring curiosity, bring questions, bring an appetite for words that matter.
Because in a disordered world, this festival insists that language is still a live wire, and Liverpool is exactly where you want to feel the current.
They say, “May we live in interesting times.” We do. WoWFEST26 is where you come to read those times closely, argue with them intelligently and immerse yourself in as much of the programme as you possibly can.
Find out more about WoWFEST 26 HERE.