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We all like to be told a good story. Visitors to this exhibition will be able to discover the new world of audiobooks. Storytel, the main platform for audiobooks in Europe, create four areas where the public can listen to passages from novels by Dolores Redondo, Ray Loriga, Richard Ford and Manuel Vilas, among others.

Led by British Council teachers, participants share this emotional novel, her fifth for young adults.

Ahead of Hay Festival Segovia, this event with British Council teachers involves creative tasks and activities to explore the works of English writing authors attending the festival this year. 

Moroccan journalist and writer Leïla Slimani has lived in France since her university days. After several years in journalism, she decided to focus on writing fiction Her first novel, Dans le jardin de l’ogre, published in 2014, explores female sexual addiction and was acclaimed by the critics. Her second novel, Chanson Douce, won France’s most prestigious literary prize. She talks to Isabel Navarro, Chief Editor of Mujer Hoy, and poet about her work, literary inspiration and influences. It is presented by Nicolas Kassianides, director of the Institut Français in Spain.

7pm. Exhibition opening of "Miradas que hablan"

The production team from Storytel, the main platform for audiobooks in Europe, explain the making of the audiobook version of this Spanish-language novel by Manuel Vilas, a fascinating take on the rock singer that will appeal to anybody who was young in the 1980s.

Jenny Valentine has won several major prizes for her children’s literature and was awarded a Hay Festival International Fellowship in 2017. Her books, several of which have been published in Spain, include Finding Violet Park and The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight. Jenny discusses ways to empower adolescents and make themselves better understood. Introduced by Peter Florence.

The Hay Fellowship is supported by Arts Council Wales

This outreach event visits schools in Segovia to celebrate Aarhus39. To showcase 39 of the most interesting children’s and young people’s writers under 40 who will be attending the first Hay Festival for Children in Aarhus as part of the Danish city’s European Cultural Capital events this year, writer Ana Cristina Herreros will discuss her stories and the art of writing with local children.

Literature into television series

How the major television series are already a body of literature that has attracted the narrative talent no longer found in cinema. From G.R.R. Martin to Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective), Aaron Sorkin or David Simon (The WireÇ), the best screenplay writers are literati with global influence. Jesús Calero, Editor in Chief of ABC’s arts pages, talks to a range of writers at this year’s Hay Festival Segovia about the new era of television storytelling.

The production team from Storytel, the main platform for audiobooks in Europe, explain the making of the audiobook version of Spanish writer Ray Loriga’s Rendición.

 Workshop for literary organisations

This one-hour networking session brings together local literary organisations, festivals and venues with five members of the European platform, Literature Across Frontiers to discuss programming and audience development ideas for live literary events with international content. This is a closed session chaired by Benjamin Rosado of El Mundo.

Registration required - please email with subject line: Hay Segovia: Ideas Session Registration info@lit-across-frontiers.org

Dolores Redondo is the most recent winner of the Premio Planeta, one of Spain’s leading literary awards, and has established herself as one of the country’s leading crime writers thanks to her highly successful Baztán Trilogy, the first book of which, The Invisible Guardian, has been filmed and is due for release this year. She talks to Spanish journalist Antonio San José about her vision of literature.

Three Spanish writers who have written about the dark arts: Enrique Bocanegra is the author of prize-winning book Un espía en la trinchera. Kim Philby en la guerra civil española. Álvaro Colomer’s Aunque caminen por el valle de la muerte, is about the battle for Najaf, while José María Beneyto has written a second novel, El espía que engaño a Hitler, set in Nazi Germany. Moderated by Marta del Riego.

One of Spain’s most popular novelists and a member of the Royal Spanish Academy talks to Ana Gavín, head of editorial relations at Planeta, one of Spain’s biggest publishers about his four decades of writing, which has produced international best-sellers such as Winter in Lisbon, Prince of Shadows, Sepharad, and In the Night of Time.

The production team from Storytel, the main platform for audiobooks in Europe, explain the making of the audiobook version of Todo Esto te dare (All this I will give you) by Dolores Redondo, one of Spain’s leading crime writers.

The charismatic author of Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? The Passion, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and, most recently, The Gap of Time talks about her work and the influences that have shaped her writing over the last three decades. She will also present her ambitious retelling of one of Shakespeare’s late plays, and her retelling moves from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crash, to a storm-ravaged city in the US called New Bohemia.

The Good Immigrant is “a document of what it means to be a person of colour” in Britain today. Shukla, who edited 21 essays by black, Asian and minority ethnic writers working across literature and the media, discusses with Ludovic Assémat the standards by which immigrants – first or second generation, refugees and asylum seekers – are either accepted into, or judged to be apart from, a dominant culture determined by whiteness.

Journalist, novelist and poet Renato Cisneros talks to the Peruvian ambassador in Spain about his latest book, La distancia que nos separa, and the changes that their country has undergone over the last decade, both in cultural terms, as well as its political evolution. Presented by Gonzalo Garland.

The production team from Storytel, the main platform for audiobooks in Europe, explain the making of the audiobook version of Between Them, by Richard Ford, one of the best US novelists of his generation and a recipient of the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award.

Mexican-born poet and translator Juana Adcock works in English and Spanish. In her first book, Manca (2014) she explores the violence of her native country. Manuel Astur is a Spanish writer, journalist and music producer. Both are among the New Voices from Europe annual selection of emerging talent by Literature Across Frontiers. She talks to writer and poet Marife Santiago.

Javier Marías,one of Spain’s most celebrated writers, member of the Real Academia Española (RAE) and the author of more than a dozen novels, Javier Marías publishes his latest novel, Berta Isla, on September 5, a work that tells the immersive and passionate story of a wait, and describes the fragility and the tenacity of an amorous relationship condemned to secrecy and hiding. He talks to Proffesor Alexis Grohmann, Chair of Contemporary Spanish Literature, Edinburgh University and Member of (RAE)