Hay Festival Querétaro 2024

Tamara Tenenbaum in conversation with César Andrés García Sánchez

Friday 5 September 2025, 1pm –  UAQ, Auditorio de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales

In order to understand Un millón de cuartos propios (2025 Paidós Prize) by Tamara Tenenbaum, we must go back to mid-2022, when the Argentinean writer was asked to translate Virginia Woolf’s famous book, A Room of One’s Own. Against this background, she proposes a re-reading of the classic work in order to reflect on the current situation of women. Her view is that even a major landmark of feminism such as Woolf’s deserves an update, a hundred years after it was first published. In conversation with César Andrés García Sánchez.

Mariana Matija in conversation with Mariana Rodríguez Granada Vázquez

Another relationship with the Earth

Friday 5 September 2025, 1.30pm –  Universidad Anáhuac, Aula Magna Edificio C

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 Mariana Rodríguez Granada Vázquez.

Linda Kamau in conversation with Enrique García Alcalá and Diana Hernández

Women in technology

Friday 5 September 2025, 2pm –  Tec de Monterrey, Punto Blanco

Linda Kamau (Kenya) is a pioneer in the field of the inclusion of women in technology. As a co-founder of AkiraChix, she has trained hundreds of young people in programming, offering them tools to transform their lives and communities. She has been recognized by initiatives such as the Obama Foundation’s Leaders Africa programme, and is a member of the Segal Family Foundation. Her leadership has encouraged a generation of women who are transforming technology. In conversation with Enrique García Alcalá and Diana Hernández.

Event in English

In partnership with Nairobi Litfest, and with the support of British Council’s UK/Kenya Season 2025

Michel Nieva in conversation with Abdiel Hernández Mendoza

The hacking of science fiction

Friday 5 September 2025, 2pm –  UNAM ENES

Michel Nieva (Argentina) is a creator of gaucho-punk, which fuses the gauchesca tradition with the cyberpunk genre. In Ciencia ficción capitalista he draws our attention to the capitalist fantasies of the technological gurus. This essay explores how the language of science fiction has been kidnapped by the neoliberal ideas of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and co. In conversation with Abdiel Hernández Mendoza.

Tania Tagle in conversation with Angélica Aguado

Friday 5 September 2025, 3pm –  UAQ, Sala Hugo Gutiérrez Vega, Facultad de Psicología y Educación, Centro Universitario

Tania Tagle (Mexico) is a writer with a meticulous literary style, one employed in Fauce to tell how, after a bereavement, the protagonist finds the words to speak to her son through a fog of silence. In Jardines errantes, her previous book, she cultivates a garden of words with a sensitive approach that allows her experiences as a daughter, mother, reader and inhabitant of this world to flourish. In conversation with professor Angélica Aguado.

Workshop with Adolfo Córdova

The character poem: between story and verse

Friday 5 September 2025, 4pm –  Parque de la Mantarraya, Delegación Félix Osores

Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Julieta Díaz Barrón

Friday 5 September 2025, 4pm –  Tec de Monterrey, Punto Blanco

Juan Gabriel Vásquez is one of the most celebrated and outstanding authors in contemporary Colombian literature. At this event he will talk about his most recent book, Los nombres de Feliza, a recreation of the life of the sculptor Feliza Bursztyn, who was a freethinking artist who went beyond the limits set by the times for women like her. This rigorous novel weaves together art, history and memoir. In conversation with Julieta Díaz Barrón.

Jumko Ogata in conversation with Paola Gallardo

A practical guide to antiracism

Friday 5 September 2025, 4pm –  UNAM ENES

In the tradition of Ibram X. Kendi (How To Be an Antiracist) and Djamila Ribeiro (Pequeno manual antirracista), the writer, translator and antiracist activist Jumko Ogata (Mexico) presents ¡Quiero ser antirracista!, a practical manual for taking a step forward and combatting structural racism in all its forms. In conversation with Paola Gallardo.

Performative lecture by Mariela Sancari

Turn the eye into a hand. Turn the hand into an eye.

Friday 5 September 2025, 4pm –  Biblioteca Campus Centro Histórico - Dirección General de Bibliotecas UAQ

We know that the relationships between images and texts can be multiple and open, and can even go beyond logocentrism. In her performance/talk Hacer del ojo, mano. De la mano, ojo, the artist Mariela Sancari will explore the notion of heterotopía through photographs and texts. To do so, she will transform a table into a device for thinking: a surface where images and words participate in a play of ever-changing and reconfigurable relationships.

Juan Villoro and Aura García-Junco in conversation with Jesús Alejo

Hay Festival Constellations: literature

Friday 5 September 2025, 5pm –  Teatro de la Ciudad

Hay Festival Constellations creates a space for intergenerational dialogue within the Mexican cultural scene, in fields such as literature, film, music, science and activism. At this event Juan Villoro and Aura García-Junco offer their thoughts as a mirror on their respective times: through essay, fiction, short stories, journalism and more, to reflect on what each one’s pen, or keyboard, can express. In conversation with Jesús Alejo.

SURA event

Reed Brody and Andrea Rizzi in conversation with Olivia Zerón

Justice against power

Friday 5 September 2025, 5pm –  Museo de la Ciudad (espacio escénico)

The writers Reed Brody (USA) and Andrea Rizzi (Italy) will talk to Olivia Zerón about urgent matters such as the relationship between power and impunity, as well as the political uncertainty that this creates. Brody, known as the Dictator Hunter, tells the story in To Catch a Dictator of the campaign to bring the Chadian dictator Hissène Habré to trial. In La era de la revancha Rizzi analyses the new global order, characterized by the rise of authoritarian regimes who scorn multilateral initiatives.

Valeria Luiselli in conversation with Gaby Wood

Friday 5 September 2025, 5pm –  Cineteca Rosalío Solano

Valeria Luiselli (Mexico) has spent years passing borders in her work. The tangible and the intangible ones: borders of geography, family, the body, memory and language. In Desierto sonoro she wrote about migration and infancy; now, with Ecos de las tierras fronterizas she presents an audio project —together with Ricardo Giraldo and Leo Heiblum— about the violence on the US/Mexico border.

Conversation with Edgar David Aguilera and Alfredo Rodríguez Karmix

Kalimán

Friday 5 September 2025, 5pm –  Biblioteca Juan de Dios Bátiz Paredes. Delegación Josefa Vergara

There is a superhero whose powers reside in the mind, the body and in an unbreakable spirit. With his white tunic, turban and an emerald with a K on his forhead, Kalimán was, and continues to be, an icon of Mexican and Latin American pop culture. Together with his associate Solín, he has been fighting evil since the 1960s, on radio and in bestselling comics. He also conquered cinemas in the 70s. Considered to be the first Mexican superhero, he showed us that there is no weapon more powerful than the mind, and that «whoever controls the mind, controls everything». Conversation with Edgar David Aguilera y Alfredo Rodríguez Karmix, co-screenwriters of Kalimán: El despertar.

Francisco Llorca, Edgar Trevizo and Luis Sandoval talk to Cristina Fuentes la Roche

Publishing talent: Independent publishers. What do they publish and why?

Friday 5 September 2025, 5pm –  Museo de la Ciudad (sala 2)

Spanish-language independent publishing is of a wonderful richness and variety. Three very different publishing companies will talk about their work and their aspirations. Francisco Llorca (Las Afueras, Spain), Edgar Trevizo (Medusa Editores, Chihuahua-Mexico) and Luis Sandoval (Mishin ediciones, Queretaro-Mexico) will talk to Cristina Fuentes la Roche.

Co-organized with Librerías Cálamo and AECID

Reading club with Arnoldo Gálvez and Emilia Pesqueira

La era glacial

Friday 5 September 2025, 5pm –  Casa Hay Festival (C. Francisco I. Madero 71)

Emilia Pesqueira’s reading club comes to Hay Festival Queretaro with Arnoldo Gálvez (Guatemala) and his novel La era glacial. The truth can hurt, but the novel’s two main characters find in their improbable friendship a link that can keep them together now they are on the brink of death.

Caminalee: route around the Delegación Carrillo Puerto district

Friday 5 September 2025, 6pm –  Delegación Carrillo Puerto

CaminaLee is an initiative that organizes routes, so that people’s feet can connect with their brains, letting us listen to stories, characters, tales, legends and adventures, allowing us to see the past differently. With CaminaLee, we will visit some of the landmarks of Carrillo Puerto district, seeing the most important sites and hearing some of the city’s legends. Each will be explained, and with rests on the way, we will talk about historical figures and even draw them.

To participate in this activity, please click here and fill in the form

Kevin Johansen and Liniers in conversation with Mariana H

Friday 5 September 2025, 7pm –  Teatro de la Ciudad

Kevin Johansen and Liniers present Es nuestra forma de comunicarnos, which is based on the album Desde que te Madrid, recorded in the Spanish capital. This is an event that brings together two different languages ‒music and illustration‒ to make something new, with elements of humour, affinity and friendship. In conversation with Mariana H.

Pankaj Mishra in conversation with Mario Arriagada

South to North Conversations

Friday 5 September 2025, 7pm –  Cineteca Rosalío Solano

The Global South has its own commentators, and when they write, the West rarely comes out well. The essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra (India) is one of the most incisive and lucid of these voices. In Age of Anger he traces the links between contemporary violence and the rise of individualism and capitalism; while in The World After Gaza, he extends his criticism to the global racial order imposed by the West. In conversation with Mario Arriagada.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Supported by the Open Society Foundations

Selma Dabbagh and Elisa Díaz Castelo in conversation with Gaby Wood

Literary pairs

Friday 5 September 2025, 7pm –  Museo de la Ciudad (espacio escénico)

As part of the Literary Pairs series run by the Hay Festival and the British Council, and an event that will be repeated at the Hay-on-Wye Festival in 2026, the British-Palestine writer Selma Dabbagh and Elisa Díaz Castelo, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Mexican literature, will take part in a conversation together with Gaby Wood. At the event they will talk about their fiction and about works such as Out of It and Malacría respectively.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

With the support of British Council

Leo con Once reading club. Paulina Flores in conversation with Miguel de la Cruz

Friday 5 September 2025, 7pm –  Casa Hay Festival (C. Francisco I. Madero 71)

The Leo con Once reading club comes to Queretaro with the Chilean author Paulina Flores and her novel La próxima vez que te vea, te mato, which dissects, with considerable irony, the emotional insecurities of a young Chilean woman trapped in a polyamorous relationship in Barcelona. She will talk to the cultural journalist and Canal Once presenter, Miguel de la Cruz.

With the support of UNAM