Hay Festival Cartagena 2024

The Colombian graphic designer Iván Onatra has found a typographical link between the Macondian universe of Gabriel García Márquez and the streets of New York. For Macondo-York he took photos of over 200 street signs that connect with various experiences the great writer had in the Big Apple. He will talk to the Cartagena artist Lisette Urquijo.

Andrés Cota Hiriart is a Mexican biologist, zoologist and writer who has written books including Faunologías, El ajolote. Biología del anfibio más sobresaliente del mundo, Fieras familiares and Fieras interiores, and has come close to all kinds of animals in their natural habitats, travelling to some amazing places around the world, like the Galapagos, Borneo, Sulawesi and the island of Guadalupe. At this event, at which he will share images and excerpts from his books, Cota will focus on a wonderful creature from his native Mexico: the axolotl, a little amphibian with an impressive capacity for regeneration. He talks to María del Rosario Osorio Fortich.

¿Qué podemos aprender hoy en día de los antiguos filósofos estóicos? Séneca, Epicteto y Marco Aurelio tienen mayor vigencia de la que creemos, gracias a sus reflexiones sobre sabiduría, templanza y valentía. Lu Beccassino aplica al amor y el desamor dichas enseñanzas en Si nos enseñaran a amar, con consejos para antes, durante y después del amor. Enseñanzas sobre mejores formas de amar, sin sufrir en el intento. Shei talks to Mercedes Posada.

The iconic novel by Roberto Burgos Cantor, La ceiba de la memoria, has recently been republished by Himpar Editores. Óscar Daniel Campo, the editor of this version, will talk to Muriel Vanegas about the book, which won the Casa de la Américas Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. This classic novel tells the story of the Benkos Biohó insurrection, which resulted in the foundation of the first haven for fugitive slaves. A story about resistance to slavery and war; a story that is a call to the cultivation of a more plural, collective memory.

Free event for the university community

Sani Ladan (Cameroon) is an anti-racism activist, pan-Africanist, human rights defender and expert in international relations. He is also the creator of the podcast África en 1 click, designed to offer Spanish speakers a view of the African continent, talking about its history, literature, culture and geopolitics. He is also the author of the book La luna está en Duala y mi destino en el conocimiento, which tells the story of his migratory experience, from his hometown of Duala to Spain, aged just 15. En conversación con Claudia Ayola.

The Brazilian writer, publisher and translator Joca Reiners Terron has written the novel O morte e o meteoro. In it, the last members of the Kaajapukugi tribe, barely surviving in the heart of the Amazon, are sent to Oaxaca, in Mexico, as political refugees. Just days before they arrive, the anthropologist responsible for the transfer dies, and then begins a story full of mystery, overflowing imagination and adventures. In conversation with Valentina Rodríguez Ayola.

There is a Caribbean beyond the postcards, beyond the beautiful beaches bathed in sun. This is a region with a colonial history, whose exiles speak, just as those who have remained do. It is a region that is open to new arrivals, but private behind closed doors. Bajo otras luces is the Caribbean as seen by the Dominican Frank Báez: an essay about what it means to write there, and how it is seen from far off. The personal view of an essayist, a poet and a Caribbean. In conversation with Graciela Franco.

Las costuras invisibles deals with the silenced traumas of a family, one that might stand for many Latin American families: those connected with intra-familial sexual violence. In the novel, Yeniter Poleo (Venezuela/Colombia) tells of the encounter between a granddaughter and grandmother. The domestic becomes the political, and what started as an ordinary weekend becomes a story that links feminism, memory and violence. The journalist and writer is also the author of La ciudad vencida, set during the Caracazo episodes in Venezuela, a time of great repression that left hundreds dead. In conversation with Lusdary Martínez.

In Los cristales de la sal, Cristina Bendek (Colombia) shows us an intimate return: a woman leaves her Mexican exile to return to San Andrés, confronting her origins and connecting with the ancestral voice of the island. This novel was the seed of the non-fiction Hilar el ritmo, a notebook about the spiritual space that goes into literary works, and about the rhythms needed for each story, from its origin to its writing.

Gustavo Rodríguez (Peru), winner of the 2023 Alfaguara Novel Prize, pays homage to his mother and grandparents in Mamita, about family ties that reach back to the Amazon region in the 20th century, and about the cultural and social tensions of that time. This is a “postponed family duty” that has become one of the writer’s most personal and reflective novels.

Carry Somers (UK), a proponent of ethical fashion and founder of Fashion Revolution, has recently published The Nature of Fashion, a fascinating look at how we learned to create clothing from plants. This lecture will reveal some of the most recent research involved in writing the book, as well as some of the stories included in its pages, which take us from the first vegetable fibres to the colonial era and beyond. After the talk, there will be a question and answer session moderated by Ricardo Chica, Deacon of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Education at the University of Cartagena.

Incas, espías y astronautas es un retrato de las preocupaciones, simpatías e intereses recurrentes de Rafael Dumett (Perú). En este libro de ensayos y prosa sin ficción, mira al pasado para transitar por escenarios contrafácticos de la historia; y al mismo tiempo orienta su mirada al futuro, imaginando los obstáculos a los que se enfrentarán los primeros humanos que migren desde la Tierra a nuevos planetas. También traza un mapa de inquietudes tan erudito como personal y revela la carpintería de su oficio narrativo. De todo ello, y del éxito cosechado con novelas como El espía del Inca y El camarada Jorge y el Dragón, conversa el autor.

Various members of the La Pambelé band will take part in this musical event, to talk about music and activism. This ensemble is heir to the salsa brava of Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, the salsa of the street, a protest salsa, that, instead of singing about love became about the life of the neighbourhood, with all its uprootedness, pride, pain and resistance. La Pambelé mingle conversations about their music and influences with performance, for the listening pleasure of those attending. The conversation will be moderated by Gustavo Bossa.

¿Cómo se encienden las ideas creativas e investigativas en la academia? Estudiantes y docentes de la Maestría en Literatura y Escrituras Creativas de la Universidad del Norte se reúnen para explorar qué ocurre cuando teoría y práctica se encuentran y qué tensiones y hallazgos surgen en ese cruce. Una mirada a la universidad como un laboratorio vivo que acompaña escrituras con ambición estética y pensamiento crítico. Los cursantes de la maestría Omar Lubo, Lusdary Martínez y Piero Pradilla conversan con Óscar Daniel Campo y Mar Ortega.

Yo era un chico is everything that Fer Rivas (Spain) did not dare to say to her father before he died. An autobiographical novel in the form of a long letter, in which the author speaks about everything that was not mentioned before. She reveals her true identity, and confesses her shame and fear when it came to telling him in life. This is also a fierce criticism of an oppressive masculinity that made healthier father-son relations impossible. “If my past Fer had had the chance to read this, the world would have been different.” In conversation with performing artist and researcher María Raquel Pacheco Guzmán.

Una oración sin dios is the debut novel of the philosopher and writer Karima Ziali (Morocco). It is a book that is a prayer which “transgresses the order” and a fight against an imposed identity. The main character, Morad, wakes up after a night of excess, and before him is his little world, made up of Farida, a mother whose love for her children has become asphyxiating; Moha, the older brother who has left the family home; Salma, the younger sister who takes refuge in it; the cautiousness of Saleh, the father; and Doménech, a counterpoint, who can act as a guide. It is a novel made up of silences and vivid images. In conversation with Mariana Inés Tezón.

There is a Caribbean beyond the postcards, beyond the beautiful beaches bathed in sun. This is a region with a colonial history, whose exiles speak, just as those who have remained do. It is a region that is open to new arrivals, but private behind closed doors. Bajo otras luces is the Caribbean as seen by the Dominican Frank Báez: an essay about what it means to write there, and how it is seen from far off. The personal view of an essayist, a poet and a Caribbean.