Malala Read From Her Forthcoming Novel At Chelsea Arts Festival

Internationally renowned activist Malala Yousafzai gave the first-ever public reading from her forthcoming memoir Finding My Way (out 21 October) last night, on stage at Cadogan Hall at the final night of Chelsea Arts Festival in a world exclusive for audience members.

The vignette she chose to read was intimate and unexpected, steering away from the heavy subjects so often associated with the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Instead, we were taken back to her student days at Oxford – more particularly a go-karting outing which ended in a minor crash and Malala’s first encounter with her future husband, Asser Malik. ‘Even under the fluorescent lights, I thought he was gorgeous,’ she read to the rapt audience.

Malala Yousafzai reading from her memoir as part of Women and Words, From Page to Stage at Chelsea Arts Festival, 21 September 2025.

That revelatory moment set the tone for Women & Words, Chelsea Arts Festival’s grand finale in partnership with the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. It was an evening dedicated to women’s voices and how essential they are to how we understand the world.

Festival audiences had already been treated to four days of film screenings, jazz concerts, blue plaque tours, poetry readings and art installations, but the final night felt urgent, political and celebratory. Kate Mosse, novelist and co-founder of the Women’s Prize, opened the evening with a speech that was part rallying cry, part manifesto.

‘Battles that we thought we had won – for gender equality, for land rights, for civil rights, for human rights – are starting over,’ she said. ‘Books are being banned, lies are being presented as truths, and we are living with the consequences of technology in the hands of a tiny number of men being used to spread misinformation, misogyny and racism.’

Her answer was clear: books matter, words matter, diversity of voices matters. Literature, Mosse argued, offers a ‘narrative of love rather than hate,’ and a way to resist the creeping sense of powerlessness. The Women’s Prize exists to put those voices centre stage, ‘to celebrate the best writing by women and to share those stories around the world’.

If Mosse set the agenda, the stellar line-up of performers brought that agenda to life with readings spanning centuries and genres.

Women and Words, From Page to Stage at Chelsea Arts Festival 2025.

Dame Sheila Hancock gave spine-tingling voice to Elizabeth I’s rallying Tilbury speech of 1588, delivered to her troops at Tilbury, Essex, as they prepared to defend England from the approaching Spanish Armada. Later, Emily Berrington revisited Emmeline Pankhurst’s ‘Freedom or Death’ (1913), a reminder of the cost – and necessity – of protest. Sheila Atim, radiant in the power of her delivery, stirred the audience with Sojourner Truth’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ (1851).

Comedy punctuated the solemnity. Sara Pascoe and Cariad Lloyd duetted extracts from Katy Wix’s memoir Delicacy (2021), brilliantly delivering some of the email exchanges between Wix and her personal trainer who is trying to fix her through exercise regimes and diet, while Wix responds with wry, often absurd reflections that spiral into the book’s larger themes of grief, trauma and eating disorders.

Fiction, too, came in the words of Bernardine Evaristo as Sir Lenny Henry read Mr Loverman (2013), his warmth and humour bringing to life the love story of Barrington Walker. Later, he read from the haunting Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (1996), which won the Orange Prize (as the Women’s Prize was formerly known) in 1997.

One of the most moving moments of the evening came when Kate Mosse read her deeply personal correspondence with an Afghan writer who is supported by the UK charity Untold Narratives, voiced on stage by journalist Zarghuna Kargar. To hear about the reality of a woman living under the Taliban and how many of their rights have been stripped away was a jolt – and a reminder of how important it is to hear voices of those who can’t always find a way to speak out.

Kate Moss & Zarghuna Kargar at Women and Words, From Page to Stage at Chelsea Arts Festival, 21 September 2025.

The final reading by Lesley Sharp was the perfect ending to a thought-provoking and inspiring evening. She delivered Hillary Clinton’s landmark Beijing speech of 1995, with its most famous line – ‘women’s rights are human rights’ – delivered with a power that left the audience in no doubt as to why words are so important.

Mosse urged us: ‘We must not be afraid to use our voices. Together we can drown out the voices of hatred and discord.’ The audience left knowing that we all have our part to play.

Women’s Words: From Page to Stage event was presented as part of the inaugural Chelsea Arts Festival. Find more of what you missed here, and stay up to date with more news at chelseaartsfestival.com