Hay Festival Medellín 2023

Booksellers of various generations will talk about their reasons for opening a bookshop, altogether a complex enterprise. Participating will be Gloria Melo (Al pie de la Letra Bookshop, Medellin), Rodnei Casares (Ítaca Bookshop, Medellin) and Paco Goyanes (Cálamo Bookshop, Zaragoza, Spain).

This celebrated Spanish author will talk to Alfonso Buitrago about his most recent books. Javier Moro, one of the bestselling Spanish-language writers, is also a journalist and has worked as a screenwriter and film producer in Hollywood. His books include Senderos de libertad (1992), El pie de Jaipur (1995), Las montañas de Buda (1997), Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (2001, a work written together with Dominique Lapierre), Passion India, The Red Sari, El imperio eres tú (2011 Planeta Prize) and, more recently Nos quieren muertos, which the author will talk about at this event. This book, which is both an exciting read and a rigorous study, is about a key figure for understanding contemporary Venezuela: Leopoldo López. Upon being jailed in 2014, after leading massive protests against the Maduro government, López became a symbol of the struggle for democracy in the country.

Irene Solà (Spain) is the author of the publishing phenomenon When I Sing, Mountains Dance (2019), written in Catalan and translated into over 20 languages, with 15 editions in circulation and winner of the 2019 Cálamo Prize and the 2020 European Prize for Fiction. In her new book, Et vaig donar ulls i vas mirar les tenebres, Solà portrays a world full of witchcraft, ghosts, beasts and demons, and a group of women gathered around the deathbed of the oldest of them. Together, they reconstruct over three hundred years of history. In conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo.

The writer and environmental activist Gabi Martínez (Spain) is the author of nine books, including both novels and non-fiction. He is the Director of the Literatura Festival and won the 2022 Serondaya Prize, he is a founding member of the Caravana Negra Association in the defence of culture and nature, and of the Urban and Territorial Ecology Foundation. Furthermore, he is the Co-director of the Animales Invisibles project. His most recent book is Delta, a work that brings to light the reality of the Ebro Delta, which is returning to the sea: the Mediterranean advances on the land at a speed of about ten metres a year. Eduardo Romero García tells a powerful story that links the lives of an old man in Asturias, once a miner, with those of some Afro-Colombian women who reach Europe, and a group of Colombian migrants who flee their country and when they reach their destination they find ships that have brought coal from La Guajira, to a Spanish port. In conversation with Luz Helena Oviedo.

Recognised by the Ministry of Equality of Spain for her contribution to making visible trans women, Alana S. Portero is a historian, writer, dramatist, theatre director and LGTBIQ+ activist. She will talk about her first novel, La mala costumbre, which tells the moving story of the childhood and teenage years of a girl who grows up in a body that feels strange to her. Set in Madrid in the 1980s and 90s, the text deals with the uneasiness and resentment caused by a society that, unable to accept difference, distorts it. In conversation with Sara Jaramillo Klinkert.