Hay Festival Cartagena 2025

Wolfram Eilenberger (Germany) is a philosopher, journalist and writer. His passion is the application of philosophical ideas in everyday life, whether politics, culture or sport. Founding Editor of Philosophie Magazin, he has published Time of the Magicians. The Invention of Modern Thought 1919-1929, and now presents Geister der Gegenwart, an exploration of the thought of Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault and Paul Feyerabend. The book follows the path of a set of ideas that are essential for our times: from dismantling the myth of blind faith, to the progress of conspiracy theories; from sexual liberation to the most reductionist wokeness. In conversation with Óscar Guardiola-Rivera.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

María Negroni (Argentina) is an Argentine writer and poet, with a doctorate in Latin American Literature from Columbia University in New York. His work covers various genres, including poetry, essay and fiction, and she has received important fellowships, including the Guggenheim and the Rockefeller. Her publications include the poetry book Islandia, which won an award from the PEN American Center, and the novels El sueño de Úrsula and La Anunciación. Her latest books are La idea natural (2024) and Utilidad de las estrellas (2024), which presents a fusion of austere and minimalist language with intense, expressionist images. She will talk about this book with Mario Jursich.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (United States / Palestine) poet, essayist, and translator. She is author of the poetry book Something About Living, winner of the 2024 National Book Award, as well as Kaan and her Sisters. She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. In 2024 she curated a year-long subscription of Palestinian poetry books with Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore. Lena spent ten years working with journalists and editors as a volunteer for Seattle's Arab American community organizations. She helped to tell the stories of people living between two homelands, people who speak in translation and navigate the realities of long wars. Odette Yidi David is a Palestinian-Colombian researcher and adjunct professor at Universidad del Norte. In conversation with Odette Yidi David, (Colombia / Palestine).

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

There are 134 million Afro-descendent people living in Latin America, but most of this population lives in a state of inequality. How can we change this scenario? Ana María Belique (Dominican Republic) is the co-founder and leader of Reconoci.do, a movement for empowering Afro-descendent Dominicans in their struggle for equality and nationality rights, and to be free of racial discrimination; she is also the author of the children’s book La muñeca de Dieula. Ochy Curiel (Dominican Republic), activist and Latin American and Caribbean feminist theorist, social anthropologist and singer-songwriter. She is a spokesperson for autonomous, lesbian, antiracists and decolonial feminism. Lyonel Trouillot, born in Port-au Prince, teaches Creole and French literature. As well as publishing the literary magazine Demembre, he also offers participants the chance to seek advice from experienced writers at his Ateliers du Jeudi Soir workshops. Author of La belle amour humaine, he won the 2012 Geneva Book Fair Literary Prize. In conversation with Yuderkys Espinosa (Dominican Republic), Afro-Caribbean philosopher and writer and decolonial feminist.

Consecutive interpretation from French to Spanish available

This year we celebrate 20 years in Colombia: two decades of conversations, debates, questions, music, film, photography and books. Through the voices of some of the festival’s most iconic guests, as well as those who make this great festival of ideas possible, we mark the date and wish a long life to the Hay Festival in Colombia through this special documentary.

Duration: 1 hour, 23 minutes

Direction: Gustavo Gordillo

Film director and screenwriter Ava DuVernay (United States) was the first black woman to be nominated for the Oscar for best director, with her acclaimed film Selma, and the first African-American director to participate in the competitive section of the Venice Film Festival, with Origin, her most recent film. She will talk with Mábel Lara about her successful film career, what it is like to work with large production platforms and about the process that led her to choose the story of the writer Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, to trace the history of an intellectual search about the origins of racism.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

In conversation with Claudia Gurisatti, two experts will talk about the multiplicity of contemporary realities. The civil engineer and economist, Alejandro Gaviria (Colombia), was Deacon of the Economics Faculty at the University of the Andes and Assistant Director of the National Planning Department. An outstanding researcher and author of novels and essays, his latest book, El desdén de los dioses, meditates on genetic modification, artificial intelligence, ideological extremes and climate change. Bruce Mac Master (Colombia) is an Economics graduate from the University of the Andes, co-founder in 2004 of the Granitos de Paz Foundation and boardmember of ISA, ISAGEN, Colombia Telecomunicaciones and Bancóldex; he is also the author of El continente de los países resignados.

In 2025, the Hay Festival celebrates 20 years of conversations and thought in Colombia. To mark the anniversary, we have run a collaborative project in which Colombian society has helped us to put the twenty key questions for our time. We reflect on the importance of culture and literature, based on the questions: What value does fiction have for society? How can we render visible and learn from non-hegemonic narratives? What role does art play in the construction of a more peaceful, empathetic society that is aware of its challenges? With Piedad Bonnett (Colombia), Charlotte Higgins (United Kingdom), Nicola Lagioia (Italy) and Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico) in conversation with Pilar Reyes.

Interpretation from English to Spanish available

Two participants who find inspiration in the past will talk to Guido Tamayo. Laura Ortiz Gómez (Colombia) studied Literature at the Universidad Javeriana and did a Master’s in Creative Writing at the Tres de Febrero University in Argentina. In her new work, Indócil, the author explores the history of the “broom strike”, a popular movement that broke out in Argentina in 1907, when women, inhabitants of the conventillos of Buenos Aires, decided to stop paying their rent, and took to the streets. The educator and political activist, Raúl Quinto, has a degree in History of Art from the University of Granada. In 2004 he received the Andalusia Prize for Young Poets, run by the Instituto Andaluz de la Juventud, for his poetry book La piel del vigilante. His historical novel Martinete del rey sombra, won the Cálamo Prize in the Otra Mirada category, as well as the Critics’ Prize for Spanish Fiction.

Justin Torres (United States), novelist and UCLA lecturer, is a Guggenheim Foundation fellow, and won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, among others, for his book Blackouts. Through stories and memories exchanged between two characters, Blackouts brings to light a hidden history and explores the gaps left by forgetting and censorship, interlacing biography, fiction and history with a biting satire, reflecting a resistance against self-censorship in queer literature. In conversation with Gloria Susana Esquivel.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

In 2025, the Hay Festival celebrates 20 years of conversations and thought in Colombia. To mark the anniversary, we have run a collaborative project in which Colombian society has helped us to put the twenty key questions for our time. In a context in which the environmental crisis and climate change have become urgent matters, festival guests urge us to reconsider our relationship with the planet based on the following questions: How can we change existing narratives to tackle the climate emergency? How can we make the exploitation of raw materials compatible with their climate impact? How can extensive farming be made compatible with protecting biodiversity in Colombia? Peter Frankopan (United Kingdom), writer and historian; Virginia Mendoza (Spain), journalist, writer and anthropologist; Gustavo Ulcué Campo (Colombia), Nasa film and television producer. In conversation with Rosie Boycott.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available