Hay Festival Querétaro 2022

CaminaLee is an initiative that organizes walks aimed at connecting your feet and your brain, letting you listen to stories, characters, history, legends and adventures, all from a different perspective. Connecting with your imagination and your inner wisdom while you walk, feeling what you see. Walking but also reading to visit other worlds, fantastic worlds that you were not aware of, worlds where you can learn about the past, the present and the future. With CaminaLee, we will go out and tour iconic locations in the old quarter, finding the most important sites, monuments and churches. An explanation will be given about each of them, including the Teatro de la Ciudad, the Guerrero Gardens, the Palacio Municipal, the Church of Santa Clara, the Fountain of Neptune, the Casa de la Marquesa, the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro route and many other places, with rest stops and discussion of historical figures and the chance to draw them too.

To participate in this activity, please click here to fill in the registration form

Ages 6 to 12. Every child must be accompanied by an adult

Based on her personal experiences and from a study of psychology, neuroscience, literature and memoires of great artists from different creative fields, the renowned Rosa Montero (Spain) presents us an intriguing look at the links between creativity and mental instability in her most recent book, El peligro de estar cuerda. This offers readers numerous curious insights into how our brain works when we create, identifying those aspects that influence creativity and putting them before the reader’s eyes as she writes, like a detective bringing together the various clues involved in an investigation. In conversation with the journalist of the American edition of El País, Javier Lafuente.

Born in the Congo, brought up in France, and based in Germany for over two decades, Wilfried N’Sondé, is not only a talented musician, but also the acclaimed author of six novels which have been recognized with numerous major awards. His book Un océan, deux mers, trois continents (2018) tells the story of Don Antonio Manuel, born on the shores of the River Congo in 1583 and educated by missionaries. The protagonist becomes a priest and is appointed ambassador to the Pope by the king of his land. In the early 16th century, what becomes a pilgrimage to Rome becomes a voyage to the New World in a slave ship. N’Sondé will talk about this extraordinary adventure novel with the writer Yael Weiss.

Simultaneous translation from French to Spanish available

Two writers with extensive experience working in different formats have returned to fiction to present their second novels. Alma Delia Murillo (Mexico) tells the story of a forty-year old woman who, brought up among seven siblings and a working mother, sets out to look for her father. The plot of La cabeza de mi padre is both a present journey and a set of reflections on the past. Our other novelist deals with something very different: the little elites of Latin America, where political power and an excessive accumulation of possessions come together in a perverse relationship, one that plays its part in submitting the masses to endless violence and poverty; this is the background delineated by Felipe Restrepo Pombo (Colombia) in his book Ceremonia (2021). This powerful novel follows the story of Arturo Ibarra and his family, which falls compulsively into the dark temptations of corruption, money, sex, drugs and luxury, all in excess and resulting in an abyss of inconsolable loneliness. In conversation with Karla Iberia Sánchez.

The “hard problem of consciousness” is one that we must return to again and again. The award-winning historian, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst George Makari explores this in his outstanding work of non-fiction, Soul Machine (2015). The author teases out the history of concepts such as “soul” and “mind”, and how one term came to replace the other along with advances in philosophy, science and psychology. The book tackles the relationship between body and mind, between brain and consciousness, the transition from religious paradigms to rationalist views on such matters, and the philosophical, political and ethical implications of these processes, resulting in the nuances of current thought in this area. In conversation with Eduardo Rabasa, who translated the book into Spanish.

Event in English

Miriam Toews (Canada) is the author of All My Puny Sorrows, recently published in Spanish and about which she will talk with Lee Brackstone. Considered to be one of the most interesting Canadian writers of her generation, she has published eight books, including the non-fiction Swing Low: A Life (2000) and the novels A Complicated Kindness (2004) and Women Talking (2018). Her work has been recognized with an impressive number of awards, including the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize twice. Her Mennonite background plays an important role in her work and several of her books deal with the role of women in these communities. In 2007 she played the leading role, the mother of a Mennonite family, in the Carlos Reygadas film, Silent Light, which won the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Apart from writing fiction, Guillermo Fadanelli has worked in various occupations in different cities. He is the editor and founder of Moho magazine and of the publishing company of the same name. Since 1997 he has written 13 novels, including Educar a los topos (2006) and Malacara (2007), both republished in 2020. He is also the author of several books of short stories and non-fiction. His latest novel is Stevenson, inadaptado (2022), the story of Mario Stevenson, a man who has always enjoyed good health and who, one day, decides to spend time in a hotel in Mexico City. From there, the maladjusted Stevenson must contemplate the progress of a pandemic that brings an atmosphere of fear and chaos around the world. In conversation with Karina Sosa.

Some of the simplest questions are also some of the most profound, taking us into both the history of human development and the very workings of nature. Why does it rain? Where does space begin? It is questions like these that form the starting point for Algo nuevo en los cielos, a book that leads us on a personal and scientific trip into the secrets of the atmosphere, while also covering the ascent of humankind into the skies, expanding our view of the universe. Its author, Antonio Martínez Ron (Spain), is a journalist, scientist and writer. He has worked as a scientific educator for different print, radio and television media outlets, and has received major awards, such as the Ondas Prize and the Concha García Campoy Prize. This event will introduce us to meteorologists, pilots, poets and storm hunters to tell us the story of what Martínez Ron believes to be one of the most fascinating adventures that humans have ever undertaken. He will talk to Camilo Jiménez Santofimio.

Ironic, lucid and combative, Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) was Africa’s first Literature Nobel prize-winner. He is a fiction writer, dramatist, poet and political activist whose extensive body of work includes The Interpreters and Death and the King’s Horseman, a play first performed in 1976. Soyinka was imprisoned twice in Nigeria because of his criticisms of the Nigerian government and he was an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. His most recent book, Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, is a funny and bitter political satire about corruption, crafted in the form of a mystery novel. In an imaginary Nigeria, not so different from the real one, a group of rogues, preachers, entrepreneurs and politicians become involved in a plot linked to trafficking in human parts stolen from a hospital. A brilliant analysis of the human condition that portrays the spheres of power that run the world, as well as the corruption and perversion they are steeped in. In conversation with Diego Rabasa.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Cristina Fortuny (Venezuela) is an economist, writer, conference speaker and adopted Queretaran, and she has dedicated her life to closing the generation gap, promoting links between parents and children as the best protection against the challenges faced by children as they grow up surrounded by screens. Her book Crecer entre pantallas (2022) is about the uses and misuses that young people make of technology, and how parents can deal with this; it is about interacting with these devices, managing mental health, and realizing the potential that these technologies have when used well. In conversation with Imanol Martínez.

We celebrate Margo Glantz (Mexico), a Mexican writer and thinker who is known around the Spanish-speaking world as one of the language’s most prominent voices. During her career she has received the prestigious Rockefeller (1996) and Guggenheim (1998) fellowships, and over forty awards and distinctions, including the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (2003), the National Science and Art Prize (2004), the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages (2010), the Gold Medal for 50 Years of Teaching at UNAM (2011), the Manuel Rojas Ibero-American Fiction Prize (2015), the Alfonso Reyes Prize (2017), a Homage by the Mexican Academy of the Language (2020) and the Carlos Fuentes Medal at the 2021 Guadalajara Book Fair. She has received honorary doctorates from universities in Mexico and Spain. Glantz is a prolific essay writer, and one of her most successful recent books is her autobiographical The Family Tree, in which she writes of her experiences growing up as a Jew in Catholic Mexico, as well as those of her parents, both immigrants. Recent publications of her work are Historia de una mujer que caminó por la vida con zapatos de diseñador (republished in 2022), Apariciones (republished in 2022) and Sólo lo fugitivo permanece (2022). She will talk to the writer Gabriela Jauregui.

Jarvis Cocker is known around the world as the charismatic frontman of the famous British band, Pulp, and the creator of a string of indie-rock hits which had particularly great musical and cultural impact in the 1990s. He has presented his own programme on BBC Radio 6 Music, made documentaries for Radio 4, worked as an editor for Faber & Faber, and continues with his music career, launching albums such as Beyond the Pale, one of his finest post-Pulp releases. This year the Spanish-language version of his autobiographical book Good Pop, Bad Pop has been published; in it, and through objects stored for years in his attic, he looks at aspects of his life and music career. This is an event for Pulp fans, for lovers of good literature and for those who enjoy good conversation. With the cultural journalist and television presenter Mariana H (Mexico).

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Two authors of unsettling books will talk to the journalist Claudia Ivonne Hernández. With Dahlia de la Cerda (Mexico), a fiction writer, activist and philosopher, distinguished with various awards for literature and creative pursuits; the co-founder of the Morras Help Morras organization, a feminist collective that works from and for the periphery; and author of Perras de reserva (2022), a powerful collection of stories in which the writer reveals some of the most unjust aspects of the patriarchy. Our second guest is Bibiana Candia (Spain), author of the poetry books La rueda del hámster and Las trapecistas no tenemos novio, the short story collection El pie de Kafka and the narrative artefact Fe de erratas; her first novel, Azucre (2021), was chosen as one of the best fiction debuts by the El Cultural supplement of ABC newspaper (Spain). Azucre is a fascinating story, set in the 19th century, about a group of young people in Galicia where, suffering from hunger, they decide to emigrate to Cuba to work on the sugar plantations.

Jesús Carrasco was born in Badajoz in 1972 and in 2005 moved to Seville, where he currently lives. His novel Out In the Open has been one of the most successful writing debuts in recent years in international literature, winning the Book of the Year as awarded by the Madrid Booksellers; the Fundación de Estudios Rurales’ Prize for Culture, Art and Literature; the English PEN Award and the Prix Ulysse for Best First Novel. Chosen as Book of the Year by El País in 2013 and selected by The Independent as one of the best translated books of 2014 in the United Kingdom, Out In the Open has been translated into around 20 languages and made into a film by Benito Zambrano. His second novel, La tierra que pisamos (Seix Barral, 2016), “a powerful novel, both moving and chilling” (J. A. Masoliver Ródenas, Cultura/s), won the 2016 European Union Literature Prize. The author will talk to Irma Gallo.

At this event, two journalists give us a view of Ecatepec, in Mexico State, which has many of the characteristics, problems and dreams of contemporary Mexican society. Lydiette Carrión, a Mexican journalist and author, writes on the topic of violence against women in her native country. She is the author of the book La fosa de agua, an investigation that documents cases of femicide in the municipalities of Tecámac and Ecatepec in Mexico State. Emiliano Ruiz Parra (Mexico City, 1982) studied Hispanic Language and Literatures and has been a reporter for Reforma and a contributor to Gatopardo magazine. His most recent publication, Golondrinas: Un barrio marginal del tamaño del mundo (Debate, 2022), is his fourth book of literary non-fiction. Since 2020 he has been a member of the Investigative Reporting Unit and works with the Corriente Alterna site, an initiative run by UNAM’s Department of Cultural Dissemination. These two writers will talk to Felipe Rosete about the problems that beset the city of Ecatepec.

In this conversation with Karla Iberia Sánchez, Alma Delia Murillo (Mexico), Reforma newspaper columnist and author of several novels and books of short stories, presents La cabeza de mi padre, which tells the story of a forty-year old woman who, brought up among seven siblings and a working mother, sets out to look for her father. The plot of this writer’s most recent book is both a present journey and a set of reflections on the past.

We have the pleasure to talk to the acclaimed writer Vivian Gornick, one of the major voices of the second wave of US feminism, about her work. Her career as a journalist began in the 1960s as a reporter for The Village Voice, before going on to work with The New York Times and The Nation. She is the prolific author of over 15 books, including several autobiographical works, which have made her one of the most outstanding contemporary exponents of personal narrative. In Unfinished Business (2021), the author revisits some of her essential reading, discovering in these texts a new view of herself and awareness of her transformation as a person, in a work that combines literary criticism with the personal, both fields in which Gornick is a seasoned writer. She will talk to Elvira Liceaga.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

For almost a decade, Radio Ambulante has told moving, funny and surprising stories from all over Latin America, revealing the diversity of the region in all its complexity. With over 200 episodes produced in more than 20 countries, Radio Ambulante is Latin America’s most ambitious narrative journalism podcast; it is distributed by NPR, the United States’ public radio service. This will be an opportunity to meet its creators and find out about their work, discovering how they shed light on Latin American life through stories of love and migration, of youth and politics, of the environment and families in extraordinary circumstances. With Daniel Alarcón (Peru), Lisette Arévalo (Ecuador), Pablo Argüelles (Mexico), Camila Segura (Colombia) and David Trujillo (Colombia).