Hay Festival Querétaro 2023 – Nature & Environment

Mariana Matija (Colombia) is a communicator and creative researcher who explores other relationships with the Earth and its creatures and cycles; she is also the author of Niñapájaroglaciar. With a familiar, reflective voice, she offers a proposal of conscious and harmonious relations with nature, based on an everyday ecology, one that is eminently possible. This would put care of the planet at the centre, and make it possible to live in the world in a more balanced way. In conversation with Naobi López Huerta.

John Vaillant (USA/Canada) won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction for Fire Weather, a book about the terrible forest fire that burned Fort McMurray, the centre of the Canadian oil industry. In this brilliant work, Vaillant argues that it was not just a fire, but a warning that we need to prepare for an ever hotter and more inflammable world. In conversation with Cristina Fuentes La Roche.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Mar García Puig (Spain) and Mariana Matija (Colombia) advocate for a reconnection with fundamental aspects of our existence, from different perspectives. In her book, Això tan tenebrós, García Puig presents an argument in favour of the complexity of metaphors and the darkness, as against the prevailing literalness and desire for purity; in her work of non-fiction Niñapájaroglaciar, Matija looks to a more aware and harmonious relationship with nature.

There is a real-life monster that lives underwater, able to regenerate its limbs and which is always young. This is the amphibian known as the axolotl, and it is… Mexican! In this fascinating conversation together with José María Herrera Marquina, the Mexican biologist and writer Andrés Cota Hiriart will tell us anecdotes, curiosities and surprising information about this small and mysterious animal that always seems to be smiling.

Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo, Pati (Mexico) has dedicated her life to environmentalism, as founder of the Sierra Gorda ecological group, and guardian of one of the country’s most biodiverse areas. At this event, we can find out about her background and very important work in ecological activism.

The power of literature also reaches into the natural world. In nature writing, our natural surroundings become another character, the foundation of the narrative experience. Books such as Fieras familiares by Andrés Cota Hiriart (Mexico) and Niñapájaroglaciar Mariana Matija (Colombia) reimagine our relationship with nature. Our guests will talk about habitable futures, writing, and harmony with the world around us together with Connie Garrido Sicilia.