Online Events

Journalist and writer Ed Vulliamy, poet Pavlo Vyshebaba, writer, translator and artist Kateryna Mikhalitsyna and television presenter Catalina Gómez Ángel discuss what it is that makes people save rather than run away, and where the breaking point is in times of conflict. They also speak about psychological resilience versus breakdown in the face of the trauma of the war. Chaired by David Rieff.

In recent decades Roger Bartra has become an essential figure for understanding what it means to be Mexican today, based on key concepts such as melancholy and a national culture’s capacity for metamorphosis. Bartra has a doctorate in Sociology from the Sorbonne, is an Emeritus Professor at UNAM and has been a guest lecturer at different universities in Mexico, the United States and Spain. On this occasion, the event will focus on two books that are essential in order to understand his worldview, the essays Chamanes y robots: Reflexiones sobre el efecto placebo y la conciencia artificial, and Melancolía y cultura. In conversation with Jacobo García.

Presentation of the book by Volodymyr Vakulenko-K. I'm turning..., which included the occupation diary the writer kept in February-March 2022 and his selected poems. The book will be published by Vivat publishing house.

Diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko-K. – painful and truthful records that contained his thoughts and observations from the beginning of the full-scale invasion and during the occupation of Izyum and his native village of Kapitolivka in the Kharkiv region. Until the abduction by the Rashists, the inevitability of which he was aware, as well as the fact that he had little chance of survival - because he is Ukrainian because he is a volunteer, and activist because he has dignity. The day before the abduction, Volodymyr buried the diary under a cherry tree in his yard, telling his father: "When ours come, give it to them." What is it like to live under occupation? What do people become? What opens before the eyes and in the heart?

Pilar Quintana (Colombia) is the author of five novels and a book of short stories, works that have been translated into over 15 languages. She has won the Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombia Award and the PEN Translates Award for The Bitch, and won the 2021 Alfaguara Novel Prize for Los abismos, which tells the story of Claudia, a girl who lives with her parents in an apartment full of plants in Cali, absorbing the fears and troubles of the adults who raise her. In conversation with Elvira Liceaga.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia on the territory of Ukraine, the whole world laughed at the memes and jokes that Ukrainians generated about any situation in leading shows. The ability to laugh while being in the epicenter of tragedy was fascinating.

Does laughter really help you get over trauma, what comedians can joke about, and who can joke about a traumatic experience?

Armando Ianucci and David Schneider will join remotely

Adrenalina is a documentary about the Coahuila Youth Integration Centre. Teenagers and children who have stayed there offer their testimony and act in dramatic works through which they represent the realities that led them to be at the centre. The result is a view of both individual responsibility and also of systemic catastrophe, with the children using their own words and tools to express a fragile setting rarely seen in art, one that allows us to see the deep wounds that violence has caused in our country.

Duration of the documentary: 29 minutes

The performance created and led by the LASTESIS collective of the dance and song Un violador en tu camino in Santiago de Chile can be described as one of the most iconic moments in recent feminist activism. Performed all over the world, its strong message regarding the intrinsic violence of the patriarchal system points directly to matters that require urgent change in our societies, at the legal, social and cultural levels, in order to finally bring equality. Now, the collective presents Quemar el miedo (2021), a testimony of their struggle against sexist violence and oppression. In conversation with the writer and columnist Alma Delia Murillo.

Discover de story of the feminist collective that changed history with our BONUS TRACK on LASTESIS

Art Spiegelman’s Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Vladek’s story of survival – told through the diminutive where the Nazis are cats and the Jews are mice – is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his ageing father.

First published in a collected volume in 1986, the comics changed the way graphic novels were seen, showing audiences and critics that the form could be used to explore complex aesthetic, moral, and cultural themes. When Spiegelman published the book’s second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, the two-volume work was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize; it remains the only graphic novel to have ever won a Pulitzer.

Spiegelman (he will join remotely) will be in conversation with writer, curator of art projects and literary scholar Oleksandr Mykhed about his life and work.

Since 2006 when he appeared on the Mexican literary scene with El buscador de cabezas, Antonio Ortuño has established himself as one of the most talented and original contemporary writers. He was on the first list of Granta magazine’s 25 best Spanish-language writers under 35. His novel Recursos humanos was shortlisted for the Herralde Novel Prize and he also won the Ribera del Duero International Prize for Short Fiction for his book of short stories La vaga ambición. His work has been translated into over ten languages and he has contributed to media outlets such as El País, Clarín, Proceso, Etiqueta Negra and Letras Libres. He is a founder member of the punk band, Los Magones. His most recent book is the collection of short stories Esbirros (2021). In conversation with Rafael Volta.

The grand final concert opens with the spectacular Armando Servín Quintet, a project that was founded in October 2014 and whose mission is to disseminate jazz among the new generations; and continues with the La Rumorosa Blues Band, a music ensemble from Queretaro state, founded in 2010, dedicated to experiments in the composition and performance of the blues, in all its varieties and sub-genres, creating a unique musical proposal that they call “rocknblues”. With Pek Santiago (vocals and guitar), Favio Olvera (keyboards), Jorge Cuenca (bass), Jorge Mejia (drums) and Poncho Ortiz (guitar).

Often, indigenous peoples and specific communities are excluded from participation in the designs of the political and cultural systems that influence their own lives. The inclusion and active participation of all citizens is the only way of achieving full and equal democracy. Three experts will talk to the writer and anthropologist Karina Pacheco about their work with Amazon and Afro-Peruvian communities. Pedro Favaron has a doctorate in Literature from the University of Montreal, is a social researcher into Andean, Amazonian and North American indigenous peoples, and is a lecturer at the PUCP. Mariela Noles Cotito lectures in Politics, Discrimination and Public Policy at the University of the Pacific and has Master’s degrees in Law, Latin American Studies and Politics; she carries out research into the themes of human rights, gender equality, non-discrimination and the analysis of public policies related to inclusion. Roberto Zariquiey has a doctorate in Linguistics from La Trobe University (Melbourne), is a lecturer at PUCP and has headed a range of research and social projects regarding Amazon languages.

Marta Peirano (Spain) is a journalist and researcher who specialises in the relations between power and technology. Her work is known for its critical and analytical insights, investigating the dangers of concentrated power structures and addictive digital dynamics, and has received international recognition. Her latest book is Contra el futuro, resistencia ciudadana contra el feudalismo climático. According to her, there are solutions to climate change within our reach and her book sets out some strategies for citizen action in order to counter the acceleration of climate feudalism and disaster capitalism; a new anti-apocalyptic approach that builds hope for the future. In conversation with Olivia Zerón.

The main crises that the world is facing today, such as the climate emergency, the pandemic, and migration, have their roots in a system of economic exploitation of the countries of the global South. Creating a fairer system of governance and international cooperation involves understanding the ways in which these dynamics of power have been created among regions, and listening to what different regions have to say about the future. With Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (Peru), specialist in the history of the creation of the Andean nations in the 19th century and current political practices; the political scientist and expert in electoral matters, Fernando Tuesta (Peru), Doctor in the Social Sciences and PUCP lecturer; and Alberto Vergara (Peru), Doctor in Politics from the University of Montreal and author of Repúblicas defraudadas (2023). In conversation with Juan Diego Quesada.

Guillermo Arriaga has won many prizes, including the Mazatlán, the Alfaguara, the Venice Golden Lion, and a Best Screenplay award at Cannes, and has also been a nominee at the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the Baftas. At this event, the accomplished Mexican novelist and screenwriter will present his latest work of fiction, Extrañas, a bildungsroman set in 18th-century England, which plunges the reader into the world of early science and the Enlightenment’s struggle with religion, the irrational and the monstrous side of the human. In conversation with Clara Elvira Ospina.

The poet Paul Muldoon has been writing and publishing poetry for over five decades. He has been Poetry Editor at The New Yorker, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the International Griffin Poetry Prize, among many other awards. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, President of the UK’s Poetry Society and is currently Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. He has published over 30 poetry books, the most recent one published in Spanish being Elegías. He will talk to the Spanish translator of his work, Pura López Colomé.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Gisela Leal published her first novel aged 24, making her the youngest author to be published by the famous Alfaguara house. El club de los abandonados (2011) was shortlisted for the Alfaguara Prize, and is a novel about excess and decadence in high society, expressed through the tragic and opulent lives of her characters. She later published El maravilloso y trágico arte de morir de amor (2015), a story that unfolds through a continuous conversation between a young women and a writer who, in cities such as New York, Mexico City and Barcelona, try to find company in their loneliness, telling each other how they have reached that point in their lives. Her third novel, Oda a la soledad y todo aquello que pudimos ser y no fuimos porque así somos (2017) tells the story of a family that enjoys fortune and social prestige in the eyes of others. However, one of the heirs seems to embody an error in the family system: he is a potential suicide who reveals the faults, absences and unbridgeable distances that exist among its members. Leal has also published stories in the magazines Eñe and P Magazine. On this occasion, she will talk about her work with her editor, Mayra González, and with the journalist Denise Maerker.

Caitlin Moran (United Kingdom) won a British Press Award for Best Columnist of the Year in 2010 and two more for Best Critic and Best Interviewer in 2011. She is the author of the award-winning book of non-fiction How To Be a Woman (2014), a testimony that has been considered essential reading for our times. She now presents More Than a Woman (2022), which takes up the concerns of the previous book from the perspective of a woman aged over forty and deals with the new issues that arise with age: sexuality, changes in one’s body, professional life, motherhood, domestic life, relations with teenagers and older people… Caitlin Moran has written a brave and intimate manifesto about the life experiences of a middle-aged woman in the 21st century. In conversation with Gabriela Warkentin.