PRESS RELEASE – Tuesday 30 November 2021

WOW FESTIVAL LONDON 2022

• SUPPORTED BY BLOOMBERG, WOW LONDON FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES FIRST EVENING EVENTS FOR 2022
• MARIAN KEYES ON HER MUCH ANTICIPATED 2021 RELEASE AGAIN, RACHEL, THE UNEXPECTED SEQUEL TO THE ICONIC BESTSELLER RACHEL’S HOLIDAY, 25 YEARS AFTER ITS PUBLICATION
• AWARD-WINNING SOMALI BRITISH POET, BEYONCÉ COLLABORATOR, AND LONDON’S FIRST EVER YOUNG POET LAUREATE, WARSAN SHIRE LAUNCHES HER LONG-AWAITED FIRST FULL-LENGTH POETRY COLLECTION - BLESS THE DAUGHTER RAISED BY A VOICE IN HER HEAD IN A LONDON EXCLUSIVE
• THE GUILTY FEMINIST DEBORAH FRANCES-WHITE BRINGS HER NEW STAND UP SHOW TO WOW
• WRITER, POET AND ACTIVIST, SUHAIYMAH MANZOOR-KHAN LAUNCHES HER BOOK - TANGLED IN TERROR: UPROOTING ISLAMOPHOBIA
• PROGRAMMED TO THE WIRE, THE URGENT CONVERSATION TAKES THE TEMPERATURE AND PRESENTS THE MOST UP TO DATE CONVERSATIONS AT THE TIME OF THE FESTIVAL
• THE WOW - WOMEN OF THE WORLD 2022 LONDON FESTIVAL RUNS 11-13 MARCH AT THE SOUTHBANK CENTRE WITH TICKETS AND DAY PASSES NOW ON SALE

Following this weekend’s sold out Shameless! Festival, WOW - Women of the World has announced the initial line-up for its 2022 London Festival, supported by Bloomberg,which returns to the Southbank Centre from 11-13 March to mark International Women’s Day. The first guests announced today include bestselling author Marian Keyes, poet Warsan Shire, comedian Deborah Frances-White, activist Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, as well as a panel on the most urgent gender equality issues - with the timely programme and panel to be confirmed just ahead of the weekend.

The London edition of the world’s biggest, most comprehensive festival celebrating women, girls and non-binary people will be back in person after some of the toughest years in recent history for gender equality. A digital programme will be announced next year.

On 12 March audiences can join Marian Keyes, the internationally bestselling author of some of the most widely loved, genre-defying novels of the past thirty years. In that time she has used her platform to raise some of the most challenging issues of our time, including addiction, immigration, depression, domestic violence and the Repeal the Eighth campaign. For one night only at WOW, 25 years after the 1.5 million copy bestseller Rachel’s Holiday was published, she will be talking about writing, feminism, joy, expectation and the release of the highly anticipated Again, Rachel - her 15th novel and the sequel to Rachel’s Holiday.

Award-winning Somali British poet and activist Warsan Shire launches her long-awaited first full-length poetry collection Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head in this London exclusive at WOW Festival on 12 March. Warsan is the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Black Is King, author of Teaching My Mother House Give Birth and London’s first ever Young Poet Laureate. She will read from the electrifying collection which features poems of migration, womanhood, trauma and resilience; drawing on her own life, pop culture and news headlines. The Saturday evening - featuring guests to be announced - will bring to life Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head.

After over five years of doing stand up comedy as part of her hit podcast The Guilty Feminist to audiences at some of the biggest venues across the UK, Deborah Frances-White will present an intimate evening at WOW on 12 March with her new hour of takes. Revealing some of her most personal “I’m a feminist but…” confessions and sharing stories too intimate for the podcast she invites audiences in to laugh at the patriarchy with her – roar, cheer, rejoice - and leave triumphant.

In an exclusive WOW event on 11 March, writer, poet and activist, SuhaiymahManzoor-Khan will launch her new book, Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia. Suhaiymah will be bringing this groundbreaking book to life for the first time. They will explore the ways that Muslim women are specifically violated through Islamophobic focus on what they wear, the languages they speak, the ways they raise children and more; including state-led attempts to regulate and co-opt Muslim women's identities to surveil and discipline Muslims more broadly, damaging everyone in the process. Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia is part of the Outspoken Series published by Pluto.

With the news agenda and world events changing at such rapid speed, WOW has reserved an evening on 12 March to respond to the most up to date and recent happenings that affect gender equality in societies around the world in The Urgent Conversation. The line-up of speakers and topics of discussion will be decided just before the event to ensure it’s absolutely current. The evening will bring together new perspectives from leading contributors, with plenty of time for questions from the audience.

Day Passes are now on sale for Friday and Saturday as well as tickets to evening events. A sell out every year, Day Passes give WOW festival goers access to dozens of talks,

performances, workshops and more. Individual ticketed events take place every evening and all day on Sunday, alongside a digital programme that will be accessible worldwide The full programme is still to be announced. Across the three days, WOW London 2022’s line-up of world class speakers, inspirational activists, musicians, artists and comedians will take over the Southbank Centre for discussions, workshops, performances and debates including everything from sex to politics, “grandmotherdom”, divorce, comedy, sexual violence, childlessness, reproductive rights, career changes, poverty, men and boys, resistance and resilience, girls education, love and relationships, football and how the pandemic has affected us all.

WOW London 2022 will see the return of many other WOW favourites including the free-to-explore WOW Marketplace and the sell-out Under 10’s Feminist Corners, which invite children to explore equality and discover what life is like for their peers across the world.

A number of the festival’s key themes are explored in The WOW Podcast, which celebrates the achievements of women, girls and non-binary people, and takes a frank look at the obstacles in their way through inspiring interviews and unique insights. Series 2, which focuses on how money, technology and media can impact the lives of women and girls, can be accessed for free at: https://thewowfoundation.com/a...;

Run by UK charity The WOW Foundation, 2022 is the 12th WOW London Festival. In 2018, WOW Founder Jude Kelly built on the success of the festival to create UK-based charity The WOW Foundation to run the global WOW movement that believes a gender equal world is urgently needed, possible and desirable. Since the inaugural London Festival in 2011, WOW and its partners across the world have reached more than three million people in more than 100 festivals and events across six continents. Recent events include November’s first ever WOW Festival in Taiwan, WOW Kaohsiung, and Shameless! Festival of Actvism Against Sexual Violence in London, a co-produced festival by WOW and Birckbeck University of London’s SHaME project to address the global crisis of sexual violence.

The WOW Foundation is proudly supported by its Global Founding Partner Bloomberg, and Global Partner Mastercard.

ENDS

IMAGES

Images are available here.

LISTINGS

WOW London 2022

11 – 13 March, Southbank Centre

Day passes available for Friday 11 & Saturday 12 March

Day Pass price £40

Under 10’s Feminist Corners (SOLD OUT)

Sat 10.30am for girls aged 6-7 years old

Sat 1.30pm for girls aged 8-10 years old

Sat 4.30pm for boys aged 8-10 years old

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan: Tangled In Terror

Friday 11 March

8.30pm-10pm, £10

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

The Urgent Conversation

Saturday 12 March

6.15pm-7.45pm, £10

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Marian Keyes at WOW: Again, Rachel

Saturday 12 March

6pm-7.30pm, £25

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Warsan Shire at WOW: Bless the Daughter

Saturday 12 March

8.30pm-10pm, £25

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Deborah Frances-White Stands Up at WOW

Saturday 12 March

9pm-10.30pm, £22

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

NOTES TO EDITORS

About The WOW Foundation

The WOW Foundation was created by Jude Kelly CBE in 2018 to run the global movement that is WOW - Women of the World Festivals. The Festivals began in the UK in 2010, launched by Kelly at the Southbank Centre London, where she was Artistic Director, to celebrate women and girls, taking a frank look at what prevents them from achieving their potential, raising awareness globally of the issues they face, and discussing solutions together.

To date, WOW has reached over 3 million people in 30 locations on six continents, in locations including Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Somaliland, the UK and the USA. In 2018/19 WOW was in Rio de Janeiro, Cardiff, Bradford, Bangladesh, Brisbane, Janakpur (Nepal), Baltimore, London, Exeter, Norwich, Perth, Beijing, Ghana and Nigeria. In June 2020, WOW held its first ever worldwide online festival focused on women and girls — WOW Global 24. The festival travelled around the world everywhere from the UK to Nigeria, and Pakistan to Australia exploring the intersectional impact of COVID-19 on gender inequality, and responding to Black Lives Matter. In 2021, WOW’s first ever sold out Shameless! Festival of Activism Against Sexual Violence took place, co-organised with Birkbeck’s SHaME project.

Over the last 10 years the Festivals have developed a reputation as a space for world renowned artists, activists, thinkers and performers including Angela Davis, Malala Yousafzai, Annie Lennox, Patrick Stewart, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Salma Hayek, to come and participate, alongside thousands of women and girls who don’t have public profiles but are doing amazing things. WOW provides platforms for people of all kinds, changes attitudes, brings communities together and provides a unique space for people to work together towards gender equality in their own communities. One example of the impact of the festival came in 2015, with the founding of the Women’s Equality Party by Sandi Toksvig and Catherine Mayer.

In 2018 Kelly left the Southbank Centre to run The WOW Foundation full time as a charity working to build, convene and sustain a global movement that believes a gender equal world is possible and desirable through festivals and empowering women and girls. The unique festival model creates numerous pathways for participants to take part in WOW projects, amplify their own causes, or start new initiatives which have a wide impact on communities. It is the biggest, most comprehensive and most significant festival dedicated to presenting work by women and promoting equality for women and girls.

WOW festivals and events are presented by arrangement with the Southbank Centre. The President of WOW - Women of the World is HRH The Duchess of Cornwall.

About Bloomberg

Bloomberg – the global business, financial information and news leader – is a founding supporter of WOW - Women of the World Festivals. Bloomberg has long supported organisations and causes that advance gender equality and seek to address challenges women face around the world, from maternal and reproductive health to women’s economic empowerment and inspiring the new generation of female leaders. Bloomberg has proudly supported WOW Festivals since 2012 www.bloomberg.com/women

About the Southbank Centre

The Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest arts centre occupying a prominent riverside location that sits in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames. We exist to present great cultural experiences that bring people together and we achieve this by providing the space for artists to create and present their best work and by creating a place where as many people as possible can come together to experience bold, unusual and eye-opening work. We want to take people out of the everyday, every day. The site has an extraordinary creative and architectural history stretching back to the 1951 Festival of Britain. The Southbank Centre is made up of the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery as well as being home to the National Poetry Library and the Arts Council Collection. It is also home to four Resident Orchestras (London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) and four Associate Orchestras (Aurora Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra and National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain).