Hay Festival Querétaro 2021 – Literature

El libro de los outsiders is the literary and audio-visual project of Rafael Volta, who gives a voice to those who are not usually named. This is not the Queretaro of the «outstanding figures» of the Heraldo de Navidad, but of those who walk on the fringes. A tale that tells of Queretaro from the periphery.

Ramón Gener (Spain) has found a true vocation in education on the subject of music, bringing his love of opera and art to new audiences. More than just a conversation, he will offer a journey of (re)discovery, allowing music to excite us, and talking about Historia de un piano, a captivating novel about the life of an instrument that becomes a metaphor for the redemptive power of love, friendship, beauty and, of course, music. In conversation with Felipe Bohorquez.

The digital era has transformed us, to the extent that it is now possible to think about ourselves as digital beings. We no longer turn the page, but scroll on our mobile devices. What is the role of reading in this new era? Juan Villoro (Mexico) responds to these and other questions in his book No soy un robot, an essay that avoids academicism and combines autobiography with reflection and speculation. In conversation with Francesco Manetto.

Ramón Gener (Spain) has found a true vocation in education on the subject of music, bringing his love of opera and art to new audiences. More than just a conversation with Sopitas, he will offer a journey of (re)discovery, allowing music to excite us, and talking about Historia de un piano, a captivating novel about the life of an instrument that becomes a metaphor for the redemptive power of love, friendship, beauty and, of course, music.

The epic oral poetry of works such as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Mahabharata focuses on memorable characters. Inspired by this tradition is the «character poem»; at this event with Adolfo Córdova we will create one, with a narrative heart but poetic limbs. To give it life, we will need a name, a body, a place and a wish.

Tania Tagle (Mexico) is a writer with a meticulous literary style, one employed in Fauce to tell how, after a bereavement, the protagonist finds the words to speak to her son through a fog of silence. In Jardines errantes, her previous book, she cultivates a garden of words with a sensitive approach that allows her experiences as a daughter, mother, reader and inhabitant of this world to flourish. In conversation with Jazmín Agreda Ríos.

In her long essay Això tan tenebrós, Mar García Puig (Spain) makes a defence of the power of figurative language, since existence unfolds among metaphors, and these represent not only all that exists, but everything we can conceive of. This is a matter that women know particularly well, given that they can give life, but also take it away. In conversation with Ester Bautista Botello.

Michel Nieva (Argentina) is a creator of gaucho-punk, which fuses the gauchesca tradition with the cyberpunk genre. In Ciencia ficción capitalista he draws our attention to the capitalist fantasies of the technological gurus. This essay explores how the language of science fiction has been kidnapped by the neoliberal ideas of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and co. In conversation with Abdiel Hernández Mendoza.

Tania Tagle (Mexico) is a writer with a meticulous literary style, one employed in Fauce to tell how, after a bereavement, the protagonist finds the words to speak to her son through a fog of silence. In Jardines errantes, her previous book, she cultivates a garden of words with a sensitive approach that allows her experiences as a daughter, mother, reader and inhabitant of this world to flourish. In conversation with professor Angélica Aguado.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez is one of the most celebrated and outstanding authors in contemporary Colombian literature. At this event he will talk about his most recent book, Los nombres de Feliza, a recreation of the life of the sculptor Feliza Bursztyn, who was a freethinking artist who went beyond the limits set by the times for women like her. This rigorous novel weaves together art, history and memoir. In conversation with Julieta Díaz Barrón.

Hay Festival Constellations creates a space for intergenerational dialogue within the Mexican cultural scene, in fields such as literature, film, music, science and architecture. At this event Juan Villoro and Aura García-Junco offer their thoughts as a mirror on their respective times: through essay, fiction, short stories, journalism and more, to reflect on what each one’s pen, or keyboard, can express. In conversation with Jesús Alejo.

Valeria Luiselli (Mexico) has spent years passing borders in her work. The tangible and the intangible ones: borders of geography, family, the body, memory and language. In Desierto sonoro she wrote about migration and infancy; now, with Ecos de las tierras fronterizas she presents an audio project —together with Ricardo Giraldo and Leo Heiblum— about the violence on the US/Mexico border.

There is a superhero whose powers reside in the mind, the body and in an unbreakable spirit. With his white tunic, turban and an emerald with a K on his forhead, Kalimán was, and continues to be, an icon of Mexican and Latin American pop culture. Together with his associate Solín, he has been fighting evil since the 1960s, on radio and in bestselling comics. He also conquered cinemas in the 70s. Considered to be the first Mexican superhero, he showed us that there is no weapon more powerful than the mind, and that «whoever controls the mind, controls everything». Conversation with Edgar David Aguilera y Alfredo Rodríguez Karmix, co-screenwriters of Kalimán: El despertar.

Spanish-language independent publishing is of a wonderful richness and variety. Three very different publishing companies will talk about their work and their aspirations. Francisco Llorca (Las Afueras, Spain), Edgar Trevizo (Medusa Editores, Chihuahua-Mexico) and Luis Sandoval (Mishin ediciones, Queretaro-Mexico) will talk to Cristina Fuentes la Roche.

Emilia Pesqueira’s reading club comes to Hay Festival Queretaro with Arnoldo Gálvez (Guatemala) and his novel La era glacial. The truth can hurt, but the novel’s two main characters find in their improbable friendship a link that can keep them together now they are on the brink of death.

As part of the Literary Pairs series run by the Hay Festival and the British Council, and an event that will be repeated at the Hay-on-Wye Festival in 2026, the British-Palestine writer Selma Dabbagh and Elisa Díaz Castelo, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Mexican literature, will take part in a conversation together with Gaby Wood. At the event they will talk about their fiction and about works such as Out of It and Malacría respectively.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

The Leo con Once reading club comes to Queretaro with the Chilean author Paulina Flores and her novel La próxima vez que te vea, te mato, which dissects, with considerable irony, the emotional insecurities of a young Chilean woman trapped in a polyamorous relationship in Barcelona. She will talk to the cultural journalist and Canal Once presenter, Miguel de la Cruz.

They guide, influence, rouse passions… literary podcasts have become a media phenomenon for readers, and a vital shop window for the publishing world. Chismecitos literarios and Grandes infelices are two of the most successful in Mexico and Spain. Their respective creators, Magali Torres (Nena Mounstro) and Javier Peña will talk to Isabel Posadas.

About to turn 90, Rui Nabeiro looks back at his childhood and working and family life. In Almoço de domingo, José Luís Peixoto (Portugal) uses the family ritual of the Sunday lunch to offer an elegy on time, legacy and beauty. When life reaches its end, what is most important is the beauty of the journey.