Hay Festival Segovia 2023

Intramuros magazine has been working on the «minimal autobiography» canon for more than 25 years. Beltrán Gambier, its director, with the collaboration of Guilas Moreira, actor and audiovisual producer, will give a workshop with the aim of showing the secrets so that the public can tell by writing, if they want, their life in a thousand words: minimal autobiography. And this is done through theoretical guidelines and the reading of selected fragments of autobiographies to encourage and motivate the participants—who do not require any academic training—, in the same workshop, to write four or five first paragraphs in the first person, or a minimum complete autobiography, that will be read among the participants in the second of the sessions of this autobiography workshop.

Event in Spanish

For the third consecutive year, Hay Festival Segovia holds the Minimal Autobiographies workshop at the Segovia Prison, led by Beltrán Gambier, founder and director of the magazine Intramuros, a leading publication in the genre. Over the magazine’s three decades, it has had contributions from prestigious writers, including Nobel Literature Prize winners such as Günter Grass, Herta Müller, and Mo Yan. Gambier is also a lawyer and writer of several legal texts in areas including penitentiary administrative law. Pedro Zuazua will also participate. He is a graduate in Hispanic Literature and Linguistics from the University of Oviedo, Director of Communications at PRISA Noticias, and author of En mi casa no entra un gato and Días para ser gato, books with autobiographical content about his life with his cats Mia and Atún.

This is a unique opportunity for people who are incarcerated to participate in an intellectual literary activity where they will write a fragment of their own autobiography.

Event in Spanish

Alexander the Great went down in history as a mighty conqueror, but, as always, behind the legend lay the person. That is where the young writer, Planeta Prize 2023 finalist, Alfonso Goizueta, steps in with La sangre del padre ('The Blood of the Father'); a novel that endeavours to reflect the chiaroscuro of power and its devastating propensity to destroy any dreams of freedom. With historical rigour, Goizueta traces the life of a man who wanted to weave his own dreams fighting his enemies, but also facing up to his personal contradictions and those of the people closest to him. He will lead a seminar with María José Ferrari, professor and Vice Dean of Academic Affairs at IE Arts & Humanities.

There will be a book signing at the end of the event

Event in Spanish

Human beings have always made sense of their world by means of stories. But now, as people increasingly retreat into silos of perceived differences and the planet verges on catastrophe, the need for stories has never been greater, because storytelling offers us a way out of social and ecological collapse.

In this interactive workshop, Cece Helgesen, founder of StoryJam Europe based in Montpellier, France, will examine the role of storytelling in our personal and professional lives and guide participants through a series of exercises aimed at stimulating what she calls "the inner lens of storytelling," so that elements of lived experiences can be used to construct distinctive personal stories that connect with others and spur them to action.

Storytelling is a powerful tool that we can all use to work toward a more compassionate world, not only with each other, but with the planet itself.

Event in French