Online Events

Based on her personal experiences and from a study of psychology, neuroscience, literature and memoires of great artists from different creative fields, the renowned Rosa Montero (Spain) presents us an intriguing look at the links between creativity and mental instability in her most recent book, El peligro de estar cuerda. This offers readers numerous curious insights into how our brain works when we create, identifying those aspects that influence creativity and putting them before the reader’s eyes as she writes, like a detective bringing together the various clues involved in an investigation. In conversation with the journalist of the American edition of El País, Javier Lafuente.

Ironic, lucid and combative, Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) was Africa’s first Literature Nobel prize-winner. He is a fiction writer, dramatist, poet and political activist whose extensive body of work includes The Interpreters and Death and the King’s Horseman, a play first performed in 1976. Soyinka was imprisoned twice in Nigeria because of his criticisms of the Nigerian government and he was an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. His most recent book, Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, is a funny and bitter political satire about corruption, crafted in the form of a mystery novel. In an imaginary Nigeria, not so different from the real one, a group of rogues, preachers, entrepreneurs and politicians become involved in a plot linked to trafficking in human parts stolen from a hospital. A brilliant analysis of the human condition that portrays the spheres of power that run the world, as well as the corruption and perversion they are steeped in. In conversation with Diego Rabasa.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Eley Williams is the author of The Liar’s Dictionary, a novel that in 2021 won a Betty Trask Award and which The Guardian newspaper included on its list of books of the year. In 2023, Williams was selected by the prestigious magazine Granta as one of the best young British novelists. She shares this honour with Carlos Yushimito (Peru), named in 2010 as one of the best young Spanish-language novelists by the same magazine. The author will present his book El peso inevitable de las palomas, with which he returns to the short fiction form that originally brought him to the attention of a wide public.

This event inaugurates the Hay Festival and British Council’s Literary Pairs series; each pair will repeat their event at the Hay Festival in Wales in 2024.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Jarvis Cocker is known around the world as the charismatic frontman of the famous British band, Pulp, and the creator of a string of indie-rock hits which had particularly great musical and cultural impact in the 1990s. He has presented his own programme on BBC Radio 6 Music, made documentaries for Radio 4, worked as an editor for Faber & Faber, and continues with his music career, launching albums such as Beyond the Pale, one of his finest post-Pulp releases. This year the Spanish-language version of his autobiographical book Good Pop, Bad Pop has been published; in it, and through objects stored for years in his attic, he looks at aspects of his life and music career. This is an event for Pulp fans, for lovers of good literature and for those who enjoy good conversation. With the cultural journalist and television presenter Mariana H (Mexico).

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

We have the pleasure to talk to the acclaimed writer Vivian Gornick, one of the major voices of the second wave of US feminism, about her work. Her career as a journalist began in the 1960s as a reporter for The Village Voice, before going on to work with The New York Times and The Nation. She is the prolific author of over 15 books, including several autobiographical works, which have made her one of the most outstanding contemporary exponents of personal narrative. In Unfinished Business (2021), the author revisits some of her essential reading, discovering in these texts a new view of herself and awareness of her transformation as a person, in a work that combines literary criticism with the personal, both fields in which Gornick is a seasoned writer. She will talk to Elvira Liceaga.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

"You don’t take photos with a camera, but with your head and your heart.” So says Bernardo Pérez, whose viewfinder has been aimed at those black holes around the planet suffering from violence, extreme poverty and the abandonment of human rights. His camera was also a witness to some of the main events of the Spanish Transition to Democracy, after he joined the founding team of El País in 1976, as well sporting events such as the Olympic Games, heads of state, international conflicts… Pérez has accompanied writers such as Juan Goytisolo and journalists like Maruja Torres on projects for El País Semanal magazine, assignments that have taken him around the Americas and Europe. He will talk to the Hay Festival Segovia about his experience, putting words to the Compromiso con la realidad exhibition that will accompany the festival, putting a selection of his images on show.

Pérez will talk to the journalist Aurelio Martín.

Event in Spanish

This event will be part of the South to South series, in which the Hay Festival offers a forum for some of the most innovative voices of the global South, in order to share different ways of seeing the world, as well as non-Western solutions to the problems that beset us. Talking to Emma Graham-Harrison will be the Mexican filmmaker Natalia Beristain, director of films such as Los adioses and Ruido; Carlos Moreno, the French-Colombian scientist and urban planning expert, famous for creating the idea of the 15-minute city; and Djamila Ribeiro, the Brazilian philosopher and activist, known for publications such as Lugar de fala and Quem tem medo do feminismo negro?

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

This event invites us to explore reality and imagination from the perspective of speculative architect and filmmaker Liam Young. The artist will give a performative talk that, through his words and images, will transport us to real and imaginary worlds that invite us to examine our present and rethink our future. The talk will incorporate an exploration of the use of Artificial Intelligence through a conversation between Liam Young and young researcher Piera Riccio.

Artist Liam Young (Australia, 1979) works in a hybrid space where architecture and design, film, science and fiction intersect to generate powerful audio visual pieces that envision the risks and potential of new technologies. At a time when technological transformation seems to be happening faster than our ability to understand what the effects might be, the worlds that Young constructs invite us to explore their possible outcomes. In his own words, we don’t need more charts and graphs to show us what’s going wrong with the world, we need to dramatize data to get people emotionally engaged.

Liam Young's work has been exhibited in some of the world's leading exhibition spaces, including the MET, MoMA, the Royal Academy and the Venice Biennale. His pieces have also been broadcast on BBC and Channel 4 and he has been nominated for BAFTA awards. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and MIT and was on the faculty of the Strelka Institute until its closure.

The young researcher Piera Riccio is working on her doctoral thesis in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with the European ELLIS programme at the University of Alicante and a grant from the Banco Sabadell Foundation for the promotion of young talent. Riccio’s doctoral thesis deals with the social implications of the use of Artificial Intelligence algorithms in social networking platforms and how they are defining the flow of information in our society, thus establishing new paradigms of mass communication.

How do new generations experience their relationship to identity, history, love or the concept of revolution? Yara Rodrigues Fowler is one of the most emblematic up-and-coming British writers on the current literary scene. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for her debut, Stubborn Archivist. The Financial Times named her as one of "the 30 most exciting young people on the planet" as one of the designers of a bot that encouraged Tinder users to register to vote in the 2017 UK general election. Fowler's new novel, There are more things, revolves around the political awakening of Melissa and Catarina, two London flatmates with roots in Brazil.

Hanan Issa is a writer, poet, and artist from Wales. Her debut pamphlet My Body Can House Two Hearts was published by Burning Eye Books in 2019. Her work has been performed and published in a variety of places including BBC Wales, ITV Wales, Huffington Post, StAnza festival and Poetry Wales. Her winning monologue was performed at the Bush Theatre in 2018. She is the co-founder of the Where I’m Coming From open mic collective. She is currently working on short film commissions with BBC New Creatives and Ffilm Cymru Wales. Hanan Issa has been named Wales fifth national poet, making her the first Muslim to hold the title. Hanan has recently been awarded the 2022/23 Cymrodoriaeth Rhyngwladol Hay Festival / Hay Festival International Fellowship.

For her part, Xita Rubert has won over readers and critics with a fascinating debut, My Days with the Kopps, in which she wonders whether growing up is to enter a fiction of no-return. Rubert graduated in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Warwick, after studying at universities such as the Sorbonne. She currently holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, on a scholarship from Princeton University, where she teaches on the relationship between philosophy, literature and medicine.

They will be in conversation with Ludovic Assémat, Head of Arts at the British Council in Spain.

Once the event has finished, the authors will sign books in the booth outside IE University.

With simultaneous translation from English to Spanish

Can literature counteract the negative consequences for society of fake news? Nativel Preciado and Antonio Lucas, two writers who are both journalists and authors, will try to answer this question from the point of view of literary figures, and also talk about how those who work in the media can fight the impact of fake news and move towards quality journalism. Nativel Preciado has had a long career as a journalist, going back to her coverage of the Transition to Democracy. This columnist and public speaker has published around twenty books. Her latest novel, El santuario de los elefantes, won the Azorín Prize. Antonio Lucas is a well-known cultural journalist, Editor of the El Mundo supplement, La Esfera de Papel. He is also a distinguished poet, having been recognized with the Loewe Prize for his book Los desengaños.

They will talk to Daniel Fernández, editor and CEO of Cedro.

Event in Spanish

After the event, the writers will be signing books at the stand on Calle Real

Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo (Spain), a member of the Spanish parliament for the Partido Popular, will talk to Rocío Silva-Santisteban about her book Políticamente indeseable, a combination of autobiography and essay in which she tackles questions such as political polarisation, intolerance towards those who hold opposing opinions, and the lack of debate in our society today. At this event, the author will share her personal experience in politics, and how she has been labelled “politically incorrect” for expressing her opinions without fear of the consequences.

Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo will join the event remotely.

This summer's heat waves, water scarcity, fires, have put the effects of climate change at the center of the debate more than ever. Meteorological phenomena and interventions on nature are causing alert about our future and that of the planet. Butterflies are disappearing. The deterioration of their habitats due to the use of pesticides, industrial fertilizers and monoculture farming has meant that the numbers of these insects have dropped by 80% in the last fifty years, and the threat of their disappearance is becoming ever more real. The problem goes far beyond the sad loss of some wonderful insects: this is an ecological catastrophe. The renowned evolutionary biologist and ecologist Josef H. Reichholf, winner of the Sigmund Freud Award for Scientific Literature, has been studying lepidopterans for years, and is the author of The Disappearance of Butterflies, a fascinating work of non-fiction about these insects and a cry for help in the face of the disaster of their decline. For his part, Joaquin Araujo, naturalist, author, screenwriter and series director, who stands out among many for having been the first Spaniard to be awarded the UN Global 500 and the Wilderness Writing Award and for being the only Spaniard to be awarded twice the National Prize for the Environment, makes us aware of the biological and poetic importance of water, through his latest book “Somos agua que piensa” "We are water that thinks".

Both will converse with Isabela del Alcázar, Global Head of Sustainability at the IE University. As one example projects under her office: The Nurture Hub, a project founded by two students of the School of Architecture and Design and their mentor to create a space for relax for the students, enhance the biodiversity, raise awareness and attract indigenous pollinators, such as butterflies.

Once the event has finished, the authors will sign books in the booth outside IE University.

Simultaneous translation from German to Spanish and vice versa

Emotions have played an important role in the development of civilisations throughout history, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Richard Firth-Godbehere, author of A Human History of Emotion: How the Way We Feel Built the World We Know, his expertise in psychology, neuroscience, art, philosophy and religion to show that some of the most exceptional moments in history were not about events, but about feelings: the origins of philosophy, the birth of Christianity, the fall of Rome, the scientific revolution or the great wars of the 20th Century would not be understood without them. We must therefore ask ourselves to what extent emotions and emotional intelligence are important for our generations. Along with Lee Newman, behavioural science expert and Dean of IE Business School, he will discuss how emotions drive our behaviour and decision-making.

They will be joined by Jonathan Moules, journalist, newsletter editor and writer on The Week Ahead for the Financial Times.

Once the event has finished, the authors will sign books in the booth outside IE University.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish