Hay Festival Cartagena 2023

Two journalists from one of the world’s most respected media outlets will give this journalism workshop aimed at university students. Carlos Serrano (Colombia) and Ana María Roura (Ecuador), members of the BBC Mundo team, will explain the Spanish-language work model of this British news service, which is over a hundred years old and is renowned for its news rigour and quality. Our guests will talk particularly about broadcasting content creation and managing the social media.

Laura Ardila (Colombia) is a Caribbean journalist with two decades of experience who has spent many years researching the question of how power works in Colombia as well as the issue of the relationship between the regional clans and the Bogota elites. She will talk to Juanita León about the book La Costa Nostra, which analyses the role of the influential Char family in Colombian politics, specifically in the Caribbean region, and also matters related to censorship and free access to information.

The US journalist and writer Jon Lee Anderson, part of the New Yorker team and the author of numerous books on Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, will talk to Jaime Abello Banfi, Director of the Gabo Foundation, about his love of travel writing.

Since 2014, the Gabo Foundation and the Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias, as part of an alliance lasting over a decade, have been offering, in homage to the English writer, the Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Grant, an award that is supported by the Michael Jacobs Foundation for Travel Writing.

The journalism website Los Danieles, founded during the pandemic by Daniel Coronell (who will participate digitally), Daniel Samper Ospina and Daniel Samper Pizano, has become an independent news site with a big following in Colombia. Together with Ana Bejarano, who is also part of the team, the fourth well-known columnists will talk, alongside Enrique Santos, about the Colombian and global current affairs.

What lies behind the scenes of an assassination, coup d’état or a swindle? In his latest book Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks, the acclaimed writer Patrick Radden Keefe (United States) takes us around the planet to discover some of the most startling crimes committed by rogues of all kinds, whose crimes or eccentric behaviours are portrayed in the book. Radden Keefe writes for the New Yorker and is the author of critically-acclaimed works such as Say Nothing and Empire of Pain. In conversation with the journalist Ana María Roura.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

What happens when great artists and athletes get to the end of their careers? In The Last Days of Roger Federer, in his characteristic style, Geoff Dyer portrays figures as different as Bob Dylan, Friedrich Nietzsche and Boris Becker, offering a lucid reflection on success and decadence. Through anecdotes and history, the author shows us the last days of these geniuses, demonstrating that it is possible to find meaning in the finite, and to continue to reinvent ourselves long after youth has ended. In conversation with the journalist Fernando Gómez.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

The award-winning journalist, writer and documentary-maker, Eliane Brum (Brazil), lives and works in Altamira, in the Amazon rainforest. She has received around 40 journalism prizes. She writes for Spain’s El País and is the author of La Amazonia: viaje al centro del mundo (2024), a book that narrates her move from Sao Paulo to Altamira, a city where the construction of one of the world’s largest (and most ecologically devastating) dams is taking place. She writes about the negligence and corruption that is changing the face of the Amazon. In conversation with Erna von der Walde.

Simultaneous translation from Portuguese to Spanish available

The award-winning journalist, writer and publisher Tina Brown (UK) has a long career in the British and American media. Between 1970 and 2001 she was Editor-in-Chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. In the year 2000 she was given the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 2009 she founded the Women of the World initiative, a summit held in New York, London, Toronto, Dubai and New Delhi and involving women leaders, CEOs, global activists and celebrities including Hilary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and the Nobel prizewinners Leymah Gbowee and Nadia Murad. Brown is also the author of the Vanity Fair Diaries and the bestseller The Palace Papers, an incisive investigation that takes us inside Buckingham Palace, revealing stories that help us to understand the British royal family as never before. She will talk to Kirsty Lang.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Central America has a concerning number of autocracies who oppress investigative journalists and restrict freedom of expression. Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela, all countries with journalists who have been sent into exile for speaking the truth. Talking part at this event will be Carlos Manuel Álvarez (Cuba), Laura Aguirre (El Salvador) and Alfredo Meza (Venezuela); professionals who have had to leave their homes in order to publish high-quality journalism containing the truths that power will not tolerate. In conversation with Jan Martínez Ahrens, Director of El País América.

All Sunday events will be free for people who has an ID expeded in the Bolívar Department. You must request their courtesy tickets at the box office of the Hay Festival (CCCI) showing your ID, between 22 and 28 of January.

This award aims to be a stimulus for narrative journalism in Spanish, and to reward the work of the best literary journalists writing in the language. With this event, the 4th Anagrama / Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation Prize for Non-fiction (which began in 2019 as the Sergio González Rodríguez Anagrama / UANL Prize) enters a new phase. The great Mexican journalist and writer Sergio González Rodríguez, in whose memory the prize was initiated, continues to be in our minds, and his extraordinary work will continue to encourage us to promote new voices in narrative journalism. The award will have the support of the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation and has an alliance with the Hay Festival. The jury of the Anagrama / Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation Prize for Non-fiction is made up of Martín Caparrós, Carlo Feltrinelli, Leila Guerriero, Juan Villoro and Silvia Sesé. Coordination and preselection has been the responsibility of Felipe Restrepo Pombo.

All Sunday events will be free for people who has an ID expeded in the Bolívar Department. You must request their courtesy tickets at the box office of the Hay Festival (CCCI) showing your ID, between 22 and 28 of January.