Projects and partners

Hay Festival Arequipa works in collaboration with several organisations.

SURA

SURA, Hay Festival’s Latin American Partner, continues to support the Festival. This year, it is supporting three conversations: How Art Explains a Continent, with Carlos Granés and Fietta Jarque in conversation with Katerina Valdivia Bruch; The Making Of: Mariano Melgar, Poetry, Love and Rebellion, with J. M. Coetzee in conversation with Valerie Miles; and Maps to Understand Ourselves, with André Aciman, Elma Correa, Catherine Fletcher, Vidya Narine and Irenosen Okojie in conversation with Enrique Planas. SURA is also supporting two book clubs, with Patricio Pron and Rosa Chávez Yacila. In addition, SURA is the sponsor of the digital broadcasts of Hay Festival Arequipa 2026.

South to North Conversations

Through its South to South series, Hay Festival Global seeks to create a space for dialogue among some of the most innovative voices from the Global South, bringing together different ways of understanding the world and non-Western approaches to the challenges we face. The series is supported by Open Society Foundations. At Hay Festival Arequipa 2026, we present several South to North conversations: The World Has Become a Strange Place, with Farid Kahhat in conversation with Camila Osorio; Truth, Memory and the Challenges Peru Still Faces, with Julio Arbizu, Cecilia Bákula, Javier Ciurlizza and José Luis Ramos Salinas in conversation with Patricia del Río; Narrating is Healing, with Elisa Tokeshi in conversation with Andrea Lerner; Love, Italian Style, with André Aciman in conversation with Miguel Barreda Delgado; Reservoirs of Memory, Cracks of Violence, with Elma Correa and Karina Pacheco in conversation with Cecilia Barría; More Humanism, with Carlos Peña in conversation with Alberto Vergara; Mexico, the Intimate and the Wild, with Liliana Blum and Alma Delia Murillo in conversation with Cecilia Barría; and the Closing Event: Readings of Mariano Melgar, a musical recital by J. M. Coetzee and Valerie Miles.

ACCIÓN CULTURAL ESPAÑOLA (AC/E)

Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) is a public organisation dedicated to promoting Spain’s culture and heritage, both within and beyond its borders, through a wide-ranging programme of activities including exhibitions, gatherings, lecture series, film, theatre, music, audiovisual productions, and initiatives that promote the mobility of professionals and creators. As part of its initiatives to promote the internationalisation and mobility of professionals in Spain’s literary sector, AC/E has established a collaboration programme with Hay Festivals held around the world, co-organising activities to promote and showcase the work of Spanish creators internationally. Hay Festival Arequipa 2026 will feature a strong presence of Spanish talent: Sarah Babiker Moreno, Greta García, Nerea Pallares, Patricio Pron and Quan Zhou.

BRITISH COUNCIL

Hay Festival and the British Council launched a global partnership at the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye in 2010, building on their collaboration since the creation of Hay Festival Cartagena. Since then, they have worked together to bring writers and thinkers from the UK to audiences around the world. The British Council’s literature team promotes British publishers, poets and writers to communities and audiences worldwide, developing innovative, high-quality events that build connections between writers, publishers and cultural institutions. The British authors participating in Hay Festival Arequipa 2026 will be supported by the British Council, helping to ensure that the UK’s literary knowledge and expertise are recognised and appreciated by audiences in Peru. The British authors taking part in the festival are Catherine Fletcher, Cal Flyn, Rose Lowder and Irenosen Okojie.

BBC MUNDO

To complement the programming of its Spanish-language festivals and extend their reach through digital media, Hay Festival partners with BBC Mundo to develop complementary content in which Hay Festival Arequipa guests, alongside leading figures from the cultural worlds of the Americas and Europe, discuss current affairs, recommend books and authors they admire, and share their perspectives on specific issues. Readers will also find curious stories and have the opportunity to test their knowledge of literature and the Spanish language. BBC Mundo journalists moderated several festival sessions.

This digital programme, featuring exclusive videos, articles, images and conversations, will be published on the BBC Mundo website and social media channels and on Hay Festival platforms.

EL PAÍS AMÉRICA

Hay Festival and El País have established a media partnership covering all the festivals in Latin America, bringing festival content to the newspaper’s readers and the newspaper’s interviews and investigations to festival audiences. The newspaper hosts one conversation at each festival with a leading international figure, while both organisations share content to bring Hay Festival closer to El País readers. This year’s programme features the conversation What Is Happening in the Region?, with Farid Kahhat and Alberto Vergara in conversation with Camila Osorio.

THE ECCLES INSTITUTE FOR THE AMERICAS AND OCEANIA AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY

The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award is an annual literary prize of £20,000 awarded for a writing project exploring a theme related to the Americas. The award is organised by the Eccles Institute for American Studies at the British Library, in partnership with Hay Festival Global. It is open to writers working on fiction or non-fiction books in English or Spanish that require the use of the Americas Collection at the British Library. Hay Festival is pleased to support the award and contribute to promoting the call for submissions and the work of the winners by inviting them to its festivals. At Hay Festival Arequipa 2026, we present the conversation The Diversity of Sexual Pleasure, with Luis Nieto Degregori and Eloísa Vaello in conversation with Diego Molina Rey de Castro.

HAY DIALOGUES WITH CUADERNOS HISPANOAMERICANOS

Hay Dialogues with Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos seeks to foster knowledge and exchange between writers of different generations and nationalities, united by a shared language and literary tradition enriched by authors from diverse backgrounds. This initiative, which takes place at each of the Hay Festivals, brings together an established author, who in turn invites a younger writer from either Latin America or Spain to participate. Spanish authors are invited to propose a Latin American writer, and vice versa. It is a dialogue that builds bridges between different generations and countries, united by a shared literary tradition, with Spanish literature acting as the bridge. On this occasion, Claudia Apablaza and Santiago Roncagliolo will be in conversation with Ricardo Sumalavia.

AREQUIPA MEN’S AND WOMEN’S PRISONS

As part of its commitment to engaging with the most vulnerable sectors of the community, Hay Festival Arequipa has organised sessions in the men’s and women’s prisons in Socabaya since 2019. This year, alongside the talks scheduled with festival guests, we have designed a programme to encourage engagement with reading, in collaboration with members of the Bibliobici project. The programme consisted of four scheduled visits to the prison, with the aim of gathering the voices of inmates around readings, texts and other creative materials that we worked with at each stage. The visits took place ahead of Hay Festival Arequipa 2026. Members of Perú Runners will visit the prison during this year’s edition.

Activities at Colegio de Alto Rendimiento de Arequipa (COAR)

Colegio de Alto Rendimiento de Arequipa (COAR) welcomes students in their third, fourth and fifth years of secondary education who have demonstrated the ability to undertake an educational programme designed to strengthen their outstanding skills across a range of fields. Hay Festival Arequipa seeks to give these young people the opportunity to engage with distinguished guests, inspiring them to shape their own careers with a broad, interdisciplinary outlook and to make an impact within their families, among friends and neighbours, in their school and university communities, and ultimately as agents of change in the country. This year’s programme features two activities: a workshop-talk with María Gracia Ríos and Rosario Yori, and a conversation with Phillip Chu Joy.

HAY FESTIVAL COMUNITARIO IN MAJES, sponsored by Zafranal Teck

Hay Festival Arequipa, together with its partner Zafranal Teck, will develop a series of activities in the Majes Valley aimed at strengthening the creative capacities of the general public, and particularly young people, encouraging them to imagine new opportunities for the sustainable development of the Majes Valley, home to important natural and cultural resources, including the Toro Muerto petroglyphs.