Hay Festival Cartagena 2024

Over the course of four decades, and with 15 years as a columnist, Margarita Rosa de Francisco has become one of the most entertaining and influential personalities in the Colombian media. Her roles in soap operas such as Gallito Ramírez (1986-87) and Café con aroma de mujer (1994-95) made her a star of national television. She has acted in around 20 film and television productions, has contributed to media outlets such as El Tiempo, SoHo, Ellas and El Espectador and has won many prizes, including the Simón Bolívar, TV y Novelas, Macondo and the India Catalina awards in Colombia, as well as the recent Horizon Award at the 2023 Venice Film Festival for Best Actress in the film El Paraiso, directed by the Italian Enrico María Artale. She will talk to Ricardo Chica Gelis about her second book, Margarita va sola (2023), a collection of memories and reflections on matters that range from revealing one’s body and erotic initiation, to her thoughts about God and identity.

Two writers, through fiction and non-fiction respectively, tell the life of the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, considered to be one of the fathers of modern geography. The acclaimed writer William Ospina (Colombia) presents his latest novel, Pondré mi oído en la piedra hasta que hable (2022), which deals with the time that the explorer spent in Colombia (from Cauca to Quindío, and from Magdalena to Barú). The historian Andrea Wulf (Germany/UK), winner of the 2013 Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award, is the author of the lauded biography of von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature (2016), a book that follows his footsteps up the world’s highest volcanoes, his trip along the River Orinoco, and his journeys to Siberia and even Cartagena de Indias. In conversation with Natalia García Freire.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Through his book Bailando con la muerte (Dancing with Death), doctor and politician Roy Barreras (Colombia) will share his experience on treating and curing his own cancer. Barreras has written this book with the aim of providing support to all those who have faced cancer, as well as to the families of patients who have suffered from this challenging disease. His work represents a clear invitation to face the most primordial ancestral fear of all human beings, which is the fear of dying, transforming it into the pleasure of living with a purpose. In conversation with Andrea Bernal.

All Sunday events will be free for people who has an ID expeded in the Bolívar Department. You must request their courtesy tickets at the box office of the Hay Festival (CCCI) showing your ID, between 22 and 28 of January.