WOW Festival London 2022 Announces Initial Line-Up

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, Suhaiymah Manzoor-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/about-wow/the-wow-podcast.

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.