Hay Festival Arequipa 2021 – Biography

The journalist, travel writer and translator, Sabrina Duque (Ecuador), has lived and written in Portugal, Brazil, Nicaragua and now the United States. She has contributed writings to a range of media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. She was shortlisted for the 2015 Gabriel García Márquez Journalism Prize for her book Vasco Pimentel, el oidor. In 2018 she was awarded the Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Scholarship, granted by the Gabo Foundation, the Hay Festival and the Michael Jacobs Foundation for Travel Writing. Her most recent book, Necesito saber hoy de tu vida, is a compilation of nine profiles of figures linked to Portugal and Brazil from fields that range from lobotomy to football, from childcare to film, from prison to music, and from food to poetry.

The writer and journalist Sergio del Molino (Spain) takes us back to a crucial moment in the history of Spain employing the biographical thread of one of its major figures, Felipe González. In a masterful combination of history and literature, Un tal González shows us the figure of the Spanish politician, in a way that is not about settling scores or toppling icons. At this event, del Molino takes us into the complex world of Felipe González and shows us his unique vision of contemporary Spain. In conversation with Renato Cisneros.

Two experts analyse the current political state of Peru, one characterised by corruption and violence, but also by possibilities for reinvention. José Alejandro Godoy is a political scientist, university lecturer and author of a range of books. His works El último dictador: Vida y gobierno de Alberto Fujimori and Los herederos de Fujimori draw a portrait of the man who led Peru during the 1990s, who was behind the government that the author identifies as the last authoritarian government of the 20th century, and they also go into the continuity produced by his children. His most recent book is Peligro: Orden de disparar, which goes a little further back in time and covers events in the country between 1980 and 1986. Fernando Tuesta Soldevilla, one of the most lucid and informed political commentators today offers a detailed look at the crises that the country’s political organisations and institutions are undergoing. His most recent work, La reforma política: Ideas y debates para un buen gobierno, is a compilation of columns and articles about this matter, written over the course of three decades, and which proposes alternatives for a reformation of democracy that offers citizens reasons for hope and optimism. In conversation with Mabel Cáceres.