Hay Festival Colombia Digital

Hay Festival Colombia took place from 21 to 30 of January 2022, with events in the cities of Cartagena de Indias, Medellín and Jericó. You are currently browsing the digital programme of the festival.

If you want to browse the in-person events of Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias, click here.

If you want to browse the in-person events of Hay Festival Medellín, click here.

If you want to browse the in-person events of Hay Festival Jericó, click here.

Event 2

Rafael Navarro de Castro in conversation with Sara Jaramillo Klinkert

Econarratives

 Teatro Santamaría
Rafael Navarro de Castro (Spain) will talk to Sara Jaramillo Klinkert about his most recent novel. Navarro de Castro has a degree in Sociology and a diploma in Rural Development. He lived in Madrid, working in the film and television industry for years before he decided to leave it all and move to Monachil, a village on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains in southern Spain, where he works in traditional agriculture, raising hens, as well as in ecological activism. After his novel La tierra desnuda, he presents Planeta invernadero, a novel in which Sara, an agricultural engineer from Madrid, decides to make a change to her life when she turns 40. With her work as a central thread, she encounters conflicts and contradictions, her desire to live and enjoy life, a world of workers in the shadows, an unbridled economy, edible technologies, old farmers alienated from their ancestral knowledge, young people who turn their back on the future, and tomato plants that grow various centimetres each day and give fruit all year round. Stories and characters that will change readers’ ways of understanding what they consume, what they eat and how they live
This event has taken place
Rafael Navarro de Castro in conversation with Sara Jaramillo Klinkert

Event 14

Victoria Amelina, Jon Lee Anderson, Michael Katakis, Janine di Giovanni and Tetyana Oharkova

The Role of Journalists and Writers in War

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Ernest Hemingway was one of the first writers to live in and write about a country at war, using his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background to For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). How has the role of writers and journalists changed during the current war and what choices did Ukrainian writers make after Russia initiated it in 2014 by annexing Crimea? American writer and photographer Michael Katakis manages Ernest Hemingway's literary estate. Victoria Amelina is a novelist and activist, a winner of the Joseph Conrad Literary Award. Jon Lee Anderson is an American biographer, war correspondent and staff writer for The New Yorker. Janine di Giovanni is the co-Founder and Director of The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies, a USAID-supported organization that documents and verifies war crimes and builds cases for international justice mechanisms. Chaired by Tetyana Oharkova, a Ukrainian literary scholar, journalist and essayist.

Click here to watch this event in Ukrainian.

Closed captions are available for this event in English and Spanish. Click on the "cc" icon in the video frame to select.

This event has taken place

Event 15

Abdulrazak Gurnah (digital) talks to Alim Aliev

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The Tanzanian-British author, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, in conversation with the Ukrainian writer and decolonisation specialist.

Click here to watch this event in Ukrainian.

Closed captions are available for this event in English and Spanish. Click on the "cc" icon in the video frame to select.

This event has taken place
Abdulrazak Gurnah (digital) talks to Alim Aliev

Event 3

Virginia Mendoza in conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo

A biography of water

 Museo de Arte Religioso

Something that has strongly characterised the evolution of our species and our societies is our relationship with water. In La sed. Una historia antropológica (y personal) de la vida en tierras de agua escasa, its author takes us on a fascinating journey through time and space. In capitating prose, she links scientific discoveries with inherited tales full of life, exploring the complex relationship between humanity and thirst throughout history. From the origins of civilisations, to our contemporary challenges, this book is an invitation to reflect on our link with water and our difficulties as a species. The journalist and anthropologist, Virginia Mendoza (Spain), is the author of books that explore roots, as well as their lack. Winner of the Manuel Iradier Award for Communication in 2019 for her contribution to the La Exploradora Geographical Society, she will talk about her most recent book with Ana Cristina Restrepo.

This event has taken place
Virginia Mendoza in conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo

Event 4

Catalina Gómez Ángel in conversation with Natalia Orozco

People who fight to change the world

 Teatro Santamaría
Journalist Catalina Gómez Ángel (Colombia) has been working in the Middle East as a correspondant since 2007. Since then she has covered conflicts and social movements in different countries in the region, and since February 2022 she has dedicated most of her time to covering the large scale invasion launched by Russia in Ukraine. In the conversation alongside Natalia Orozco she will talk about the wars and social struggles through the personal stories of those who suffer and live them first hand.
This event has taken place
Catalina Gómez Ángel in conversation with Natalia Orozco

Event 5

Alejandro Gaviria in conversation with Daniel Rivera Marín

The disdain of the gods

 Museo de Arte Religioso
Alejandro Gaviria (Colombia), civil engineer and economist, was dean of the Faculty of Economics at Los Andes and deputy director of the Departamento Nacional de Planeación. A distinguished researcher and author of novels and essays, his latest book, El desdén de los dioses, reflects on genetic modification, artificial intelligence, ideological extremes and climate change. He speaks with Daniel Rivera Marín.
This event has taken place
Alejandro Gaviria in conversation with Daniel Rivera Marín

Event 6

Pablo Montoya in conversation with Adriana Cooper

In the Roman Empire

 Teatro Santamaría
In conversation with Adriana Cooper, the acclaimed author of Tríptico de la infamia, presents Marco Aurelio y los límites del imperio, in which the writer Pablo Montoya gives a masterful description of the life of Marcus Aurelius. In the cold of a winter, near Sirmium in the 2nd century AD, with Rome facing a terrible plague and barbarian incursions, the emperor is also immersed in profound personal challenges, while he reflects on the limits of power, the fragility of existence, and the weight of his decisions. A rigorous historical novel of psychological intrigue.
This event has taken place
Pablo Montoya in conversation with Adriana Cooper

Event 7

Alonso Salazar Jaramillo in conversation with Juan Diego Mejía

Operation Cirirí

 Museo de Arte Religioso
Alonso Salazar Jaramillo (Colombia) is a Colombian politician, journalist and writer. He was Mayor of Medellin during the period 2008-2011. He will talk to Juan Diego Mejía about his novel El largo vuelo de Cirirí, about the life of Fabiola Lalinde, mother of Luis Fernando Lalinde, disappeared, tortured and murdered in 1984. The tireless journey of a women to receive justice, which she herself called Operation Cirirí, made her a symbol of resistance and of the struggle against impunity in Colombia.
This event has taken place
Alonso Salazar Jaramillo in conversation with Juan Diego Mejía

Event 8

Gioconda Belli, Alma Guillermoprieto and Ana Cristina Restrepo in conversation with Juanita León

What is happening in Latin America?

 Teatro Santamaría
Social inequality and citizen action; political polarization and peace processes; community resistance and social demands: all these can be found the length and breadth of the Latin American territory. Hay Festival Jerico guests talk to Juanita León about the current state of this region, so rich, diverse and complex. With Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua), the award-winning writer, thinker and activist; the outstanding journalist Alma Guillermoprieto (Mexico); and the writer, columnist and social communicator Ana Cristina Restrepo.
This event has taken place
Gioconda Belli, Alma Guillermoprieto and Ana Cristina Restrepo in conversation with Juanita León

Event 9

Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Sara Jaramillo Klinkert

On the trail of Feliza Bursztyn

 Museo de Arte Religioso
The award-winning Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Colombia) is a fiction writer, essayist and author of eighteen books; the translator of Victor Hugo, Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster, his own work has been translated into thirty languages. Here he presents his most recent book, Los nombres de Feliza, in which the author reconstructs the life of Feliza Bursztyn, a Colombian sculptor, born in Bogota into a Jewish family and who died in Paris in 1982. The rise of the Nazi Party meant her parents had to leave Europe, while violence in Colombia sent her into exile. A friend of García Márquez, Saturnino Ramírez and Luis Caballero, she challenged the social expectations that her time sought to impose on her as a woman, artist and Jew. Vásquez talks about his new work, a rigorous investigation crafted into a novel, with a figure who is unique in Colombian culture, Sara Jaramillo Klinkert.
This event has taken place
Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Sara Jaramillo Klinkert

Event 11

Lorena Salazar Masso in conversation with Melba Escobar

Maldeniña

 Teatro Santamaría
Lorena Salazar Masso was born in Medellin and grew up in Choco. She is a publicist and writer with a Master’s in Fiction from the Madrid Writers’ School. She is the author of the acclaimed Esta herida llena de peces and of the recent Maldeniña, a novel written in poetic prose, in which silence and absence speak as loudly as the voices of her characters. In conversation with Melba Escobar.
This event has taken place
Lorena Salazar Masso in conversation with Melba Escobar

Event 14

Melba Escobar in conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo

Las huérfanas

 Teatro Santamaría
Melba Escobar is a columnist and writer, the author of the young adult novel Johnny y el mar, the non-fiction Cuando éramos felices pero no lo sabíamos, and the novels Duermevela, La casa de la belleza, La mujer que hablaba sola and her recent Las huérfanas. This book portrays Myriam de Nogales, the author’s mother: “a woman, unattainable in her skills and talents, passionate, caustic, wounded and wounding, brilliant”. Melba Escobar will talk to Ana Cristina Restrepo about this novel that delves into the family past, origins, the creation of a female identity, and the place of the dead, who never die in the minds of the living.
This event has taken place
Melba Escobar in conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo

Event 15

José Zuleta Ortiz with Juan Diego Mejía

The other versions of the events

 Museo de Arte Religioso
For 15 years, José Zuleta Ortiz ran the Libertad Bajo Palabra programme, a series of writing workshops for convicts in Colombian prisons. He won the National Literature Prize for a novel published by the Ministry of Culture in 2022 for Lo que no fue dicho. His new novel, Una versión de los hechos, tells the story of a friendship among three characters: a prisoner from a women’s prison, a literature teacher, and a publisher who returns from exile in Spain. These intertwined lives form the narrative thread that leads to a reflection on complex and powerful ideas: political correction, justice within the law, art as a way to liberation, clandestinity and imprisonment, and versions of events that lie behind the official histories. In conversation with Juan Diego Mejía.
This event has taken place
José Zuleta Ortiz with Juan Diego Mejía

Event 16

Alma Guillermoprieto in conversation with Juanita León

Narrating the Americas

 Teatro Santamaría
A reporter and writer, Alma Guillermoprieto began her career in Nicaragua during the Sandinista struggle. She covered the conflicts in Central America for the newspapers The Washington Post and The Guardian, and has written tirelessly since then about Latin America for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, National Geographic magazine, and occasionally for El País. In 2008, urged by Gabriel García Márquez, she took the Julio Cortázar Chair at the University of Guadalajara. The many awards granted to her have included the 2018 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, the MacArthur Fellowship and the Ortega y Gasset Prize (from El País) for her life work. As an educator, she has given courses on Latin America at the universities of Harvard, Chicago, Princeton and California-Berkeley, and on scientific journalism at the Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá. In her most recent publication, La vida toda. Nueva crónica estadounidense (2022), Guillermoprieto compiles and edits 13 reports that portray social and political life in the United States. An anthology that takes an in-depth look at one of the most influential countries in the world, seen from the inside. She will talk to Juanita León.
This event has taken place
Alma Guillermoprieto in conversation with Juanita León

Event 17

Gioconda Belli in conversation with Melba Escobar

Literature and resistance

 Museo de Arte Religioso
The acclaimed Nicaraguan poet and novelist Gioconda Belli is also known for her commitment to her country’s political and social struggle. Her works explore matters such as feminism, love and revolution, combining a poetic sensibility with the denunciation of injustice. Belli participated actively in the Sandinista movement, something that has formed an important influence on her work, given that in it women held a central place as agents of change and resistance. Over the course of her career she has won numerous awards, including the 1978 Casa de las Américas Prize and the Biblioteca Breve Prize in 2008. Her most famous works are The Inhabited Woman (1994) and El país de las mujeres (2010), which are about the search for identity and the struggle for freedom in contexts of oppression. Her latest book is Un silencio lleno de murmullos, a story about absence, silence and family links; after the death of Valeria in Spain, her daughter travels from Nicaragua to look after the things that she has left behind. Surrounded by these objects, Penélope symbolically meets her mother again, and starts to reflect on what was left unsaid between them. In conversation with Melba Escobar.
This event has taken place
Gioconda Belli in conversation with Melba Escobar

Event HJ2

María Dueñas in conversation with in conversation with students and teachers from the university

 Universidad Santa María La Antigua (Auditorio Tomás Clavel)

María Dueñas (Spain) is a widely-read author who has achieved considerable prominence worldwide. A Doctor in English Philology, she worked as a lecturer at the University of Murcia and at various institutions in the United States before turning to writing full time. Dueñas published her debut in 2009, the acclaimed novel The Time In Between (released in English in 2011); the book became a publishing phenomenon and has been translated into over 35 languages and made into a successful television series. Some of her best received books are The Heart Has Its Reasons, La templanza, Las hijas del capitán and Sira, all featuring an exploration of history, culture and identity, with strong, resilient female characters. Her narrative talents and capacity to connect with readers have won her awards such as the Cartagena City Historical Novel Prize, and the Madrid Region Culture Prize.

Para ver el evento en streaming, haga click aquí o donde dice "este evento está disponible en Anytime"

This event has taken place
María Dueñas in conversation with in conversation with students and teachers from the university

Event 7

Mariano Sigman in conversation with Claudia Aponte

The new intelligence

 Parque Explora (Auditorio Principal)
Mariano Sigman is an Argentinean neuroscientist who studied Physics at the University of Buenos Aires, has a PhD in Neuroscience from the Rockefeller University, and did post-doctoral studies in Cognitive Sciences at the Collège de France. Founder and Director of the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory at Buenos Aires University, he has been recognised with international awards including the Career Development Award and the Scholar Award. His new book, Artificial: la nueva inteligencia y el contorno de lo humano, co-written with Santiago Bilinkis, explores the impact of artificial intelligence in our lives. He discusses the potential benefits as well as the challenges, and analyses how this technology can transform our reality. In conversation with Claudia Aponte.
This event has taken place
Mariano Sigman in conversation with Claudia Aponte

Event 1

Carlos Vives in conversation with Andrés Mompotes

Inaugural El Tiempo event

 Teatro Adolfo Mejía

Carlos Vives is a living legend. Named Person of the Year in 2024 by the Latin Recording Academy, Vives is one of the most prolific recording artists and most loved musicians in the Spanish-speaking world. He has been in music for over three decades, winning two Grammys and 18 Latin Grammys. He has worked with artists of all kinds, from Rubén Blades to Shakira, and he has become an ambassador of Colombian culture to the world. He will talk to Andrés Mompotes about his extensive musical career.

This event has taken place
Carlos Vives in conversation with Andrés Mompotes

Event 17

Charlotte Higgins, Pablo Montoya and John Sellars in conversation with Toni Celia

Lessons from the classical world

 Centro de Convenciones (Auditorio Getsemaní)

Four experts on the classical world will talk to Toni Celia about the lessons we can take from that period, so far off in time, but so influential for Western culture, and whose echoes can still be heard in our legal systems, the philosophical tradition, and in the sciences and arts. Charlotte Higgins (United Kingdom), Chief Culture Writer at The Guardian, is the author of Greek Myths. A New Retelling, about the influence of ancient Greece on our times; Pablo Montoya (Colombia) is the author of Marco Aurelio y los límites del imperio which portrays the last of the five “good emperors” of Rome; and with John Sellars (United Kingdom), philosopher and the author of books such as Lessons in Stoicism, Epicurus and the Art of Happiness and now Aristotle: Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher.

John Sellars will participate in this event digitally

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

This event has taken place
Charlotte Higgins, Pablo Montoya and John Sellars in conversation with Toni Celia

Event 19

Gioconda Belli in conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo

Literature and resistance

 Teatro Adolfo Mejía
The acclaimed Nicaraguan poet and novelist Gioconda Belli is also known for her commitment to her country’s political and social struggle. Her works explore matters such as feminism, love and revolution, combining a poetic sensibility with the denunciation of injustice. Belli participated actively in the Sandinista movement, in which women held a central place as agents of change and resistance. She has won numerous awards, including the 1978 Casa de las Américas Prize, the Biblioteca Breve Prize in 2008 and the Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana in 2023. Her most famous works are The Inhabited Woman (1994) and El país de las mujeres (2010). Her latest book is Un silencio lleno de murmullos, a story about absence, silence and family links. In conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo.
This event has taken place
Gioconda Belli in conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo

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