Hay Festival Colombia Digital

The author and scientist Remedios Zafra (Spain), winner of the 2017 Anagrama Essay Prize for her book El entusiasmo. Precariedad y trabajo creativo en la era digital, presents her most recent publication, Frágiles. Cartas sobre la ansiedad y la esperanza en la nueva cultura (2021), which explores the complex dynamics behind immaterial and creative work, as well as the anguish and unease that can result from an, apparently privileged, life that is lived according to production and work.

In her life and work, Tamara Tenenbaum has explored very different points of view related to matters such as emotions and love, and she has done so based on feminist theory, a philosophical background, and her own experiences with people and with her own body. A Philosophy graduate from the University of Buenos Aires, she is a university lecturer, a writer and a journalist. She has contributed to publications such as La Nación, Infobae, Anfibai, Orsai and Vice. In her book El fin del amor. Amar y follar en el siglo XXIlooks in a challenging way at our views of romantic love, while considering things like the culture of consent, motherhood, being single, monogamy, polyamory, open relationships, and dating websites like Tinder. In conversation with Gina Jaramillo.

How do big corporations and governments use our data to manipulate our behaviour? Up to what point should this be permitted, and how should regulations deal with actions that end up affecting the realities of our societies? Carissa Véliz (United Kingdom) is an Associate Lecturer at Oxford University’s Institute for Practical Ethics, and a regular contributor to publications including El País, The Guardian, The New York Times, New Statesman and The Independent. In her book Privacy is Power (Transworld, 2020) she analyses these matters, as well as others that are of critical importance to our time, arguing in favour of the prohibition of the sale of personal data. In conversation with Mónica Meltis.

One of the terrible lessons that the pandemic has taught us is that the worst of the health and financial consequences have fallen on the poorest nations, and poorest populations within nations. This has emphasised the large and growing economic gaps that exist around the world today. Perhaps it would be true to say that each country has experienced its own version of the pandemic, and this event is a moment to reflect on the specific case of Mexico, one of the world’s most vulnerable countries.The journalist Mario Arriagada Cuadriello; the Executive Director of Oxfam Mexico, Alexandra Haas; and the academic, Ana Laura Magaloni will talk to Jacobo García about this extraordinary moment.

Among the many things wrong with our current socioeconomic system is not just the fact that healthcare is a privilege for the few, but that a whole illness industry exists that is structured around making a profit from those who are unwell, often with serious illnesses. The poet, essayist and lecturer Anne Boyer (United States) won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction for The Undying. A Meditation on Modern Illness, an acute and lucid work that tells of her own experience as a survivor of an aggressive breast cancer, which led her to live through and understand some chilling realities. Boyer is also the author of books such as The Romance of Happy Workers (2008), The 2000s (2009), Garments Against Women (2015) and A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018). In conversation with Eduardo Rabasa.

Among the many things wrong with our current socioeconomic system is not just the fact that healthcare is a privilege for the few, but that a whole illness industry exists that is structured around making a profit from those who are unwell, often with serious illnesses. The poet, essayist and lecturer Anne Boyer (United States) won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction for The Undying. A Meditation on Modern Illness, an acute and lucid work that tells of her own experience as a survivor of an aggressive breast cancer, which led her to live through and understand some chilling realities. Boyer is also the author of books such as The Romance of Happy Workers (2008), The 2000s (2009), Garments Against Women (2015) and A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018). In conversation with Eduardo Rabasa.

The writer and journalist Laura Castellanos and the illustrator Brenda Castro present La marcha del #TerremotoFeminista, an illustrated work of non-fiction that contextualizes feminism, from the origins of the patriarchy to the feminist movements of the 21st century. Readers follow Sofi, a teenager who joins the demonstrations that are protesting the oppression of the patriarchal system, and with whom we learn about all the victories won, and about all that still remains to be done.


From 12 years on

As well as public and political life, conflict has a significant impact on peoples’ private lives. Families change, circles of friends decrease or expand, colleagues change, and even complete strangers can come to be extremely close.

Filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk and translator and essayist Yurko Prokhasko reflect on what relationships will be like after the war. Chaired by poet Olena Huseinova.

At a time so polarized as the present, where the public conversation looks more like a competition to see who can impose their view most stridently, dialogue and the ability to listen and to see the world from others’ points of view have become more important than ever as a way to understand each other. So, as a festival of conversations, we are committed to the power of dialogue to build agreement and redefine our present and our future. As part of this spirit, this event brings together the Mixe linguist, writer and activist Yásnaya Elena Aguilar; the actor, director and activist Diego Luna; and the writer and journalist Antonio Ortuño; in conversation with the El País journalist, Javier Lafuente, to exchange points of view on how we can talk about Mexico.

Hay Festival Querétaro deeply regrets the death of Jean-Luc Nancy, who was going to participate in this edition.

This event will be a tribute to the outstading French philosopher. Professor of Philosophy and author of over 30 books, he has dealt with major themes such as national identity and nationalisms, desire and the limits of community experience. His most recent book is Sexistence (2020), which tackles the topic of human sexuality from a philosophical point of view, returning to the ideas of great thinkers such as Kant and Freud, putting an emphasis on how our experience and relationship with sex creates and feeds the individual, civilization and culture.

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.

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

Innovation and progress in society cannot be understood without bringing in a profound knowledge of the humanities and of culture. Hay Festival Segovia has invited two innovators in their fields: Pablo Isla, the new Chair of the IE University Advisory Board, was considered as one of the world’s top CEOs by international management magazines during his time at the head of Inditex; and Rodrigo Cortés, a director, actor, producer, screenwriter, aphorist and novelist with an impressive international career. Nothing seems to be beyond this writer, closely linked to Salamanca. Aged just 25 he was already filming videos for Alejandro Amenábar and he has not hesitated to undertake projects with Hollywood stars such as Robert de Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Uma Thurman, or a cast of over ten young international actors for his latest film, Love Gets a Room.

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

Event in Spanish