Hay Festival Colombia Digital

An important talk on burning issues, with three proposals for the future to build a better world, by participants in the festival who, from their respective trenches and countries, raise problems and solutions needed for a world in crisis. With educator and writer Elisa Guerra (Mexico), environmental activist and feminist Yayo Herrero (Spain) and social leader and activist Paula Marcela Moreno (Colombia), in conversation with Hay Festival Director Cristina Fuentes La Roche.

From her experiences of racism and inequality, Indhira Serrano (Colombia) will talk with Juan Mosquera Restrepo about how to overcome exclusionary imaginaries for racialized people, launching a message of self-acceptance, respect for differences and pride in Afro-Latino heritage. Serrano was a model, which gave her an insider's view of how the media influences people's self-perception. In addition, since 2015 she has been developing a series of conferences and workshops entitled Reconstruyendo imaginarios (Reconstructing Imaginaries), where she reflects on the relationships we have with money, education, our partner and power.

The influential social leader Paula Marcela Moreno (Colombia), former Minister of Culture and president of the corporation Manos Visibles, presents her book Soñar lo imposible (Dreaming the impossible), the story of social leaders who have built from within civil society and offered their talents to create a better country. A conversation with Adriana Villegas Botero in which she will also discuss racism, identity and feminism in the context of present-day Colombia.

As a Bolton teenager with a paper round, Clive Myrie read all the newspapers he delivered from cover to cover and dreamed of becoming a journalist. Now with a long standing career in reporting, the BBC news anchor, award-winning presenter and host of Mastermind tells how his family history has influenced his view of the world. He introduces his Windrush generation parents, a great grandfather who helped build the Panama Canal, and a great uncle who became a prominent detective in Jamaica. He reflects on how being Black has affected his perspective on issues he’s encountered in thirty years reporting on some of the biggest stories of our time.

Colm Tóibín reunites us with the heroine of his 2009 novel, Brooklyn, in his sequel Long Island. We find Eilis Lacey 20 years on, in the 1970s, living with her husband, Tony Fiorello, and children on Long Island, rather too close to her Fiorello in-laws. A shocking piece of news propels Eilis back to Ireland, to a world she thought she had long left behind and to ways of living, and loving, she thought she had lost. Tóibín is the current Laureate for Irish Fiction. His previous novels include The Master, The Testament of Mary and House of Names. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker multiple times, and has won both the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award. He talks to Hay Festival President Stephen Fry.

One of football’s most successful players ever, Gary Lineker’s latest act has seen him launch a podcasting empire. As founder of Goalhanger Productions, Lineker produces hit shows The Rest is History, The Rest is Entertainment, The Rest is Football and The Rest is Politics, adding much-needed nuance and insight into our national discourse. Join the England legend and Match of the Day presenter for a wide-ranging discussion of his career in sport, media and storytelling. He talks to historian and broadcaster David Olusoga.

Humans are capable of both love and hate, amazement and disgust, fun and misery. So why do we live in a world that constantly urges us to hate ourselves and others, to be repulsed by our own bodies, to be ashamed of pleasure, to be embarrassed by fun? In her new collection, the author and poet asks why we have been taught to hate, and if we might learn to love again. She won the Ted Hughes Award for Nobody Told Me, wrote the three poetry collections Plum, Cherry Pie and Papers, adapted the Greek tragedy Antigone and co-wrote the play Offside with poet Sabrina Mahfouz.

Ever outspoken, controversial and spectacularly entertaining, Britain’s naughtiest actor and the author of This Much is True returns with more juicy, jaw-dropping stories from her eventful life and career. Join us on another unforgettable adventure through the extraordinary life and strong opinions of Miriam Margolyes.

“My new book is called Oh Miriam! – something that has been said to me a lot over the years, often in tones of strong disapproval. It contains lots more revelations and stories and discoveries and I can’t wait to share it with you all!” From being escorted off the Today programme (for saying what we were all thinking) to declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave; from Tales of the Unexpected to Graham Norton’s sofa, she is our most loved and most outspoken national treasure. Oh Miriam! Stories from an Extraordinary Life takes you inside both her head and her heart. Buckle up for the most irrepressible, hilarious and moving event as she tells all to lawyer and writer Philippe Sands.

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.

Volver a Contar: Latin American Writers in the British Museum Archives is an international collaboration between the British Museum and the Hay Festival, which explores 10,000 years of human history in the Americas. The project has involved inviting a group of writers to explore narratives about the past by means of a collection of Latin American objects never seen by the public in the British Museum. Carlos Fonseca (Costa Rica and Puerto Rico), author of Austral; Lina Meruane (Chile), author of Sistema nervioso and Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico) author of El invencible verano de Liliana will talk to the journalist Andrea Aguilar (Spain) in order to present this anthology of short stories published by Anagrama, which mingles rigorous research and fiction in order for us to better understand our history and try to resolve the gaps in the historical narrative.

Event in Spanish

After this event, Anagrama will offer a drink to celebrate the launch of the Volver a contar anthology

Ai Weiwei, one of China's most internationally renowned artists, both for his creative activity and his political activism, will come to the Hay Festival in a streamed event. His memoirs, entitled 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, explore themes that touch on the very core of the Hay as a Festival of creation and thought: freedom of expression and activism, cultural and political history, as well as his creative life. His is a career that has not been limited to the visual arts, but encompasses other fields such as architecture (he participated in the design of Beijing’s National Stadium), music and film. In the book, the artist recounts his life in the United States from 1983 till 1993, and his rise to the status of superstar in the world of art.

Ai Weiwei will be in conversation with Anne McElvoy, British journalist and executive editor at The Economist, who has previously served as policy editor and head of audio. The Economist Ask, the bi-weekly Thursday programme/podcast conducted by McElvoy, has brought together hundreds of leading newsmakers from around the world.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

Currently Budapest has Europe’s largest and most ambitious urban cultural development, the Liget Budapest Project. An urban and cultural development plan that has transformed the Hungarian capital, involving internationally acknowledged architects, like Sou Fujimoto or Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). With five new buildings and half of the park area completed and three more to go, the project’s visionary, Laszlo Baan, also director of the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, will be at the Hay Festival to explain and elaborate on the project, and how it relates to comparable projects in Europe.

Isabel Fuentes, PhD in Museology of Natural and Human Sciences, has spent twenty years working in scientific communication and cultural management in institutions such as the Residencia de Estudiantes, the National Museum of Natural Sciences and the La Caixa Foundation. She is currently the director of CaixaForumand an expert in the transformation that a museum can bring about in the city inwhich it is installed.

Baan and Fuentes will talk with Miquel Molina, journalist and writer, assistant director of the newspaper La Vanguardia.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish and vice versa

Patronage of different kinds is one of the major forms of promoting and protecting creative works. Three outstanding cultural figures who understand its importance, both in the public and private spheres, come to the Hay Festival Segovia. They are Antonio Filipe Pimentel, Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, also in the Portuguese capital, who will talk about private patronage; and the ambassador Antonio Monteiro, Chair of the Millennium Bank Foundation, who will talk about support for public institutions and private creators through his foundation.

Prince Lorenzo de’ Medici, a direct descendent from a branch of the historical family of patrons, will moderate this event.

Event in Spanish

Culture is undoubtedly one of the main engines of change in a society. The directors of two of the country's most important cultural centres will return to the Festival they both know so well to debate this idea. Valerio Rocco has been director of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid since 2019 and was previously vice-dean of Research, Knowledge Transfer and the Library at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he teaches History of Modern Philosophy. Isabel Fuentes, PhD Museology of Natural and Human Sciences, has spent twenty years working in scientific communication and cultural management in institutions such as the Residencia de Estudiantes, the National Museum of Natural Sciences and La Caixa Foundation. She is currently the director of CaixaForum.

Event in Spanish

We celebrate ten years of the Hay Festival in Peru with the publication of a commemorative book, which compiles 15 memorable conversations that captured the interest of the public as part of the festival. We talk to the book’s editor, Dante Trujillo (Perú), the author Jeremías Gamboa (Perú), the photographer Daniel Mordzinski (Argentina), the author Karina Pacheco (Perú) and the journalist Clara Elvira Ospina (Colombia) about the positive and inspiring effects of the conversations that the Hay Festival Arequipa has made possible in the decade it has been running.

Marking 40 years of Jeanette Winterson’s explosive first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Published when she was just 25, the book is a gripping coming-of-age story, a queer romance and a modern classic. It tells the story of Jeanette’s avatar, a fiction as well as a fact. Adopted into a northern, working-class family who believe their new baby is destined to be a missionary, Jeanette falls in love with a young woman. Love, as always, changes the road ahead.

In 2011 Jeanette Winterson revisited this material in her best selling memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Read it? Let us know what you think on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram using #HFBookClub.

Further reading

Digested classics, The Guardian
“She gave me the chance that became my life”: Jeanette Winterson on her first editor, Philippa Brewster, The Guardian

About the author

Jeanette Winterson CBE, was born in Manchester. She published her first novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in 1985. It was adapted by her for the BBC in 1990 and won a BAFTA for best drama. Jeanette Winterson has written numerous novels, short stories, works for children, screenplays, and non-fiction. She regularly talks to tech conferences, following her essays about AI: 12 Bytes. Her latest book is the collection of ghost stories, Night Side of the River.
She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.

About Hay Festival Book Club

Timeless titles to offer you a break from the day to day. Can't decide what to read next? Follow your curiosity and join Hay Festival on a journey to imagine the world anew through great literature. Unconstrained by genre or form these are our monthly picks of great books worth reading (or re-reading) right now.

Throughout the month, we'll share interesting links and articles relating to our selection on social media using #HFBookClub and invite you all to get involved with your questions and comments. Each selection will also be marked with a free online event.

If you'd like to recommend a book for consideration, get in touch via bookclub@hayfestival.org.

Happy reading!

In 2020, Book Bunk set out to better understand Kenya’s public libraries; their histories, collections, architecture, as well as the people who use them. At the time, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) had listed Kenya as having the highest number of libraries in Africa. We wanted to see them all. Three years later, in 2023, we did just that! We visited every public library in the country. This presentation-style event shares the story of that journey and what we learned along the way: about the state of our libraries, the communities they serve, and what they reveal about Kenya herself. It also marks the official launch of Book Bunk’s Library Ecosystem Research Report; a milestone publication that maps the present and reimagines the future of Kenya’s libraries. Wanjiru Koinange, Maureen Mumbua, and Dennis Maina in conversation.

Hear from creatives telling nuanced stories about Kenyan life through their artist endeavours. Eric Wainaina from the NBO Musical Theatre Initiative has written a brown-black love story filled with original Asian-Kenyan and African-Kenyan sounds. Neddy Amoga shares how Cinema in Nature blends storytelling, history, and forest trails, transporting audiences into the tension, camaraderie, and courage of the Mau Mau movement. Mutua Matheka is an architecture, travel and conceptual photographer and a Ford Foundation (Africa - No Filter) Fellow whose recent project, FRGMNTS presented Nairobi's skyline through immersive images and sounds. In conversation with Ciku Kimeria.

Everybody seems to like the ancient world, and everybody seems to know things better than archaeologists, philologists, and historians. Ever since the early 1970s, there’s been an avalanche of insufficiently professional publications, and the rise of the internet has enabled the reintroduction of already refuted ideas. Measured by its ability to inform the general public of new insights, the study of the ancient world is a disappointment. Fortunately, there are lessons to be learned about proactive forms of science communication.

Jona Lendering (1964) studied history in Leiden and has been writing about archaeology, history, and ancient languages ever since. He published several books and built Livius.org, which was, in the days before the Wikipedia, the largest website on Rome, Greece, Persia, and other civilizations from the distant past. Today, he maintains a daily blog on ancient history, MainzerBeobachter.com.

Jan W. Bok (1970) is a faculty member of the Global College, IE University, Madrid. Before that, he taught Political Philosophy at the Erasmus University, the Netherlands, and World Language and Literature at the Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy. He is a proud graduate from different academic institutions, including the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (History and Arts, Philosophy) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Political Science) in Paris, France.

Presented by Roel Nieuwenkamp, Ambassador of the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish