Hay Festival Cartagena 2024
Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2024 was held from 25 to 28 January. In this page you can find the events in the general programme as well as Hay Joven activities for university audiences, Hay Comunitario sessions which took place in different areas of Cartagena, Reading Clubs and Talento Editorial.
Events video and audio is available on Hay Festival Anytime.
Event HFJ1
Workshop with Tatiana Velásquez
Independent journalism today
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, sede Manga (aula MB 205)
Read moreTatiana Velásquez (Colombia), co-founder and reporter for La Contratopedia Caribe. Social communicator and journalist, graduate of the Autonomous University of the Caribbean (in Barranquilla) with a Master’s in Investigative Journalism, Data and Visualisation from the Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain, with a Google fellowship. She has worked at the Colombian media organisations El Heraldo, El Tiempo and La Silla Vacía, and has published articles in El Espectador, Spain’s El Confidencial, Vice Latinoamérica and ColombiaCheck. At this event, she will give a journalism workshop.
This event has taken place
Event HFJ2
Jesús Herrera Babilonia and Lilia Herrera in conversation with Vincent Taborda
Stories from the island. Cultural management with a community perspective
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Biblioteca)
Read moreThe Entrelazarnos: Märchenstunde Mis Cuentos de la Isla project is an initiative led by the Casa Cultural Colombo Alemana in the four towns of the island of Tierra Bomba. This project generated creative experiences with women community leaders, children and young people. At this event, Jesús Herrera Babilonia (Colombia), an educationalist, historian, psychologist and cultural manager at the Casa Cultural Colombo Alemana, and Lilia Herrera (Colombia), comunnity leader of Tierra Bomba will talk to Vincent Taborda about the experiences of those involved in the process of creating stories with an island theme.
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Sponsored by CAF
Event HFJ3
José Carlos Cueto and Norberto Paredes
BBC Mundo journalism workshop
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, sede Manga (Aula MB 205)
Read moreTwo journalists from one of the world’s most important and prestigious media organisations, José Carlos Cueto and Norberto Paredes, will give a journalism workshop aimed at university students. These two members of the BBC Mundo team will explain the working model of the Spanish-language section of this British news service, which is over a hundred years old and is renowned for its news rigour and quality, focussing particularly on audio-visual content creation and managing the social media.
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Event HFJ4
Juan Gabriel Leiva and Ingrid Silva in conversation with Laura Puello
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Biblioteca)
Read moreSince 2014, the university press of the Technological University of Bolivar (UTB) has been working on a book collection called Semilla, whose goal is to boost a love of reading and literature among young people and adults in the UTB. To create the collection, the press has carefully selected major works from different genres and authors of world literature. At this event, Juan Gabriel Leiva (Editorial Coordinator at the UTB) and Ingrid Silva (Humanities Coordinator) will talk about this reading promotion initiative and the first ten years of a publishing project that makes books available for free. In conversation with Laura Puello.
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Event HFJ5
María Hesse in conversation with Lissette Urquijo
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (sede Manga)
Read moreWhen María Hesse finished her studies in Special Education, she took up her pens to work as a professional illustrator. She has worked on text books for the Edelvives publishing company, and her latest publication is El Miedo. In this book, she faces up to her own fears, those that have accompanied her throughout her life and the same ones that she shares with so many other women. Through a highly visual and allegorical language, her pages bring to life anxiety, manipulation, precariousness, change, loneliness, madness, maternity, aging and death. In conversation with Lissette Urquijo.
This event has taken place
With the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
Event HFJ6B
Journalism workshop with Abraham Jiménez Enoa
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de la Merced (Salón Eréndira)
Read moreHow can we travel towards literature from journalism? How do both fields coexist and feed each other? This workshop will explore the bond between journalism and literature through the format of journalistic books and will analyze the path towards telling true stories with literary tools, as Abraham Jiménez Enoa did in Aterrizar en el mundo, a travel writing book about the cities of the West where the author lived during his first year outside of Cuba, which won the Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Grant in 2023. In this book, the author tells the story of his arrival in Europe and the memories of his last years in Cuba, offering an intimate and critical view of Cuban reality.
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With the support of the Michael Jacobs Foundation for Travel Writing and Fundación Gabo
Event HFJ8
Mayra Santos-Febres in conversation with Ricardo Chica
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Biblioteca)
Read moreWe talk to an outstanding figure in contemporary literature of the Caribbean: Mayra Santos-Febres (Puerto Rico), a writer and academic, recipient of awards such as the Juan Rulfo Prize and the prestigious Guggenheim, Ford and Rockefeller fellowships. Co-creator of the University of Puerto Rico’s creative writing programme and founder of the Festival of the Word (2008-2019). As a researcher she is an authority on the subject of Afro-descendants and racialisation. Her most recent publication, La otra Julia, which won a Guggenheim Fellowship, is a fictionalised biography of the Puerto Rico poet and journalist Julia de Burgos. In conversation with Ricardo Chica.
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Event HFJ6
Rafael Navarro de Castro in conversation with María del Rosario Osorio Fortich
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Aula Máxima de Derecho)
Read moreRafael Navarro de Castro (Spain) has a degree in Sociology and a diploma in Rural Development. He lived in Madrid, working in the film and television industry for years before he decided to leave it all and move to Monachil, a village in the Spanish mountains, where he works in traditional agriculture, raising hens, as well as in ecological activism. After his novel La tierra desnuda, he presents Planeta invernadero, a novel with stories and characters that will change readers’ ways of understanding what they consume, what they eat and how they live. In conversation with María del Rosario Osorio Fortich.
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With the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
Event HFJ10
Florence Thomas in conversation with Julián Navarro
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (sede Manga)
Read moreThe psychologist, columnist, writer and feminist activist Florence Thomas (France / Colombia) is recognised as one of the most influential voices in the women’s rights movement in Colombia. At 81 years of age she presents Fragmentos de vida, a book that weaves public and private memories, from her childhood in France to her activism in favour of the rights of Colombian women at the National University and the decriminalisation of abortion. Thomas reveals a life characterised by diversity and challenges, defying the narrative of a linear, perfect life. In conversation with Julián Navarro.
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Event HFJ9
Mariano Sigman en conversación con Rita Sierra
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Aula Máxima de Derecho)
Read moreMariano Sigman is an Argentinean neuroscientist who studied Physics at the University of Buenos Aires, has a PhD in Neuroscience from the Rockefeller University, and did post-doctoral studies in Cognitive Sciences at the Collège de France. Founder and Director of the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory at Buenos Aires University, he has been recognised with international awards including the Career Development Award and the Scholar Award. His new book, Artificial: la nueva inteligencia y el contorno de lo humano (2023), co-written with Santiago Bilinkis, explores the impact of artificial intelligence in our lives. He discusses the potential benefits as well as the challenges, and analyses how this technology can transform our reality. In conversation with Rita Sierra.
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Event HFJ7
Virginia Mendoza in conversation with Jorge Sará
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Biblioteca)
Read moreSomething that has strongly characterised the evolution of our species and our societies is our relationship with water. In La sed. Una historia antropológica (y personal) de la vida en tierras de agua escasa, its author takes us on a fascinating journey through time and space, inviting us to reflect on our link with water. The journalist and anthropologist, Virginia Mendoza (Spain), is the author of books that explore roots, as well as their lack. Winner of the Manuel Iradier Award for Communication in 2019 for her contribution to the La Exploradora Geographical Society, she will talk to Jorge Sará.
This event has taken place
With the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
Event HFJ11
María Jimena Duzán and Diana Uribe in conversation with Milton Cabrera
Podcasts
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de la Merced (Salón Eréndira)
Read moreTwo of the country’s most popular podcast presenters will talk about their projects, their particular approach, and how to reach a mass audience. With María Jimena Duzán (Colombia), a journalist, political commentator, writer and creator of the podcast A fondo, which looks at Colombian current affairs in considerable depth; and with Diana Uribe (Colombia) a major figure in communicating the history of the country, who has had an impressive career as a writer, radio host and now a podcast presenter. In conversation with Milton Cabrera.
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Event HFJ12
Camila Sosa Villada in conversation with Mercedes Posada
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (sede Manga)
Read moreWinner of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Las malas, Camila Sosa Villada (Argentina) has published poetry, autobiographical essays and fiction. Her most recent book, Tesis sobre una domesticación, dissects the lives of a peaceful middle-class family, one that hides histories of violence and asphyxiation, as well as love and tenderness. The protagonist, a trans actress, finds she is trapped by marriage and social convention. Sosa Villada tells of her experiences, tinged with both passion and guilt, while also reflecting on the male and the female, family and art, maternity and class difference, subjugation and love. In conversation with Mercedes Posada.
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Event HFJ13
Cristina Rivera Garza in conversation with David Lara
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Biblioteca)
Read moreCristina Rivera Garza (Mexico), translator, essayist and fiction writer, is the founder of the Creative Writing in Spanish doctorate at the University of Houston. MacArthur Fellow, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz prizewinner and recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Rivera Garza presents a collection of her poetry, Me llamo cuerpo que no está, in conversation with David Lara.
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Event HFJ14
Jorge Eljaik, Lusdary Martínez and Katherinne Vidal talk to Daniela Pabón and Óscar Daniel Campo
Why publish what we write? Creative processes in university spaces
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de la Merced (Salón Eréndira)
Read moreA conversation with students and lecturers from the Master’s programme in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of the North about the encounter with other views and other forms of reading encouraged by seminars and literary workshops. Writing communities that are built in these spaces enable reflections on the desire to be read and heard, and show that creative processes are imbued with exchange. With the students Jorge Eljaik, Lusdary Martínez and Katherinne Vidal in conversation with the educators Daniela Pabón and Óscar Daniel Campo.
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Event HFJ15
Lecture and poetry performance with María Buelvas and Luisa Ochoa, together with Katherine Osorio
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (sede Manga) - Explanada Auditorio Jorge Tahua
Read moreMaría Alejandra Buelvas and Luisa Ochoa, from Cartagena, offer an immersive experience that celebrates the word and sound as complementary elements, which experiments with the poetry in music and the melody of verse. Buelvas writes and researches; she studied Anthropology and she is interested in taking writing to other media, including visual and audio formats; Y ahora qué hago yo con esta cuchara is her first book, for which she won the Tomás Vargas Osorio National Poetry Prize. Luisa Ochoa is a lawyer, but music has been part of her life since her earliest years, given that she was raised in a family of musicians. They will talk to Katherine Osorio from Muévela Poesía, followed by a poetry performance with noisy props and word in movement.
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Event HFJ16
Bocafloja in concert
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín
Read moreBocafloja offers an immersive experience in which experiments with words come together with the urban rhythms of rap. This Mexican poet and rapper is known for his use of hip hop as a tool for raising social awareness in Latin America, tackling themes such as systemic racism, colonialism and oppression. We will hear from this artist, now in his third decade making music, and who has been a member of groups such as Lifestyle and Microphonk. He has also made influential albums as a soloist, and has been included on Rolling Stone and Billboard lists of the 50 most important artists in the history of Spanish-language hip hop.
This event has taken place
PULEP CODE: BGA795
Event HFJ17
Javier Zamora in conversation with Claudia Ayola
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (sede Manga)
Read moreThe award-winning writer and poet Javier Zamora (El Salvador / United States) is the author of the poetry book Unaccompanied and the memoir Solito. In this last book, the author tells the story of his journey of over five thousand kilometres, between El Salvador and the United States, aged just nine. The civil war in El Salvador had expelled his family from the country, and the journey, which was meant to take two weeks, became a two-month odyssey, undertaken with a group of strangers and a “coyote” through Guatemala, Mexico and the Sonora Desert (the world’s most dangerous overland migratory route). Solito is the story of that time. In conversation with Claudia Ayola.
This event has taken place
Event HFJ18
Leonardo Padura in conversation with Silvia Valero
Universidad de Cartagena, Claustro de San Agustín (Biblioteca)
Read moreLeonardo Padura (Cuba) is an outstanding novelist, journalist and critic, winner of numerous literary awards, including the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award and the 2023 Pepe Carvalho Prize. His international fame was consolidated with the Havana Quartet series, featuring the detective Mario Conde, and with The Man Who Loved Dogs, which is a reflection of his piercing and critical view of Soviet socialism. His new book, Ir a la Habana, is a long essay on his relationship with the city, supported by fragments of his novels and journalism, created together with his wife, Lucía López Coll. In conversation with Silvia Valero.
This event has taken place
Event HFJ19
Silvia Vásquez-Lavado in conversation with Joel Samper
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (sede Manga)
Read moreThe guest at this event is a pioneer with great achievements. She was the first Peruvian woman to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Sagarmatha (Mount Everest), and to climb the six highest peaks on the other continents. She is also the first openly LGTBI+ person to reach the seven summits. Silvia Vásquez-Lavado tells her story in the book In the Shadow of the Mountain, which also deals with a past of trauma and excess, and of childhood abuse. It reveals how an ayahuasca ceremony helped her to connect to the mountains, and how she undertakes her expeditions, together with other victims of sexual abuse, as part of the Courageous Girls project, founded in 2014. She will talk to Joel Samper about her activism, her memories and about the film that is currently being made.
This event has taken place
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