Hay Festival Jericó 2025
Event HFJ1
Bocafloja in conversation with Daniel Rivera Marín
Del mondongo al ojalá
Pabellón Central - Jardín de las Ideas
Read moreThe Mexican Aldo Villegas, known by the artistic name Bocafloja, is a renowned poet, social communicator, and spoken word and hip hop artist. Well known for his critic viewpoint on systemic racism, colonialism and oppression, he has been a pioneer in the use of hip hop as a tool for raising social awareness in Latin America. He began his career in the 1990s with the groups Lifestyle and Microphonk, and as a solo artist he has made influential albums such as Pienso, luego existo (2003), Jazzyturno (2004) and Existo; matriz preludio al pienso (2009). His recent book, Del mondongo al ojalá (2024) is an innovative compilation combining short stories, poetry, micronarratives and photography, exploring non-linear narratives and anti-colonial epistemologies based on racialized experience in the global South. He will talk to Daniel Rivera Marín about his music career and his incursion into literature.
Evento para jóvenes
Event 6
Pablo Montoya in conversation with Adriana Cooper
In the Roman Empire
Teatro Santamaría
Read moreIn conversation with Adriana Cooper, the acclaimed author of Tríptico de la infamia, presents Marco Aurelio y los límites del imperio, in which the writer Pablo Montoya gives a masterful description of the life of Marcus Aurelius. In the cold of a winter, near Sirmium in the 2nd century AD, with Rome facing a terrible plague and barbarian incursions, the emperor is also immersed in profound personal challenges, while he reflects on the limits of power, the fragility of existence, and the weight of his decisions. A rigorous historical novel of psychological intrigue.
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Event 9
Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Sara Jaramillo Klinkert
On the trail of Feliza Bursztyn
Museo de Arte Religioso
Read moreThe award-winning Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Colombia) is a fiction writer, essayist and author of eighteen books; the translator of Victor Hugo, Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster, his own work has been translated into thirty languages. Here he presents his most recent book, Los nombres de Feliza, in which the author reconstructs the life of Feliza Bursztyn, a Colombian sculptor, born in Bogota into a Jewish family and who died in Paris in 1982. The rise of the Nazi Party meant her parents had to leave Europe, while violence in Colombia sent her into exile. A friend of García Márquez, Saturnino Ramírez and Luis Caballero, she challenged the social expectations that her time sought to impose on her as a woman, artist and Jew. Vásquez talks about his new work, a rigorous investigation crafted into a novel, with a figure who is unique in Colombian culture, Sara Jaramillo Klinkert.
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With the support of the Colombian Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Knowledge
Event 11
Lorena Salazar Masso in conversation with Melba Escobar
Maldeniña
Teatro Santamaría
Read moreLorena Salazar Masso was born in Medellin and grew up in Choco. She is a publicist and writer with a Master’s in Fiction from the Madrid Writers’ School. She is the author of the acclaimed Esta herida llena de peces and of the recent Maldeniña, a novel written in poetic prose, in which silence and absence speak as loudly as the voices of her characters. In conversation with Melba Escobar.
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Event 14
Melba Escobar in conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo
Las huérfanas
Teatro Santamaría
Read moreMelba Escobar is a columnist and writer, the author of the young adult novel Johnny y el mar, the non-fiction Cuando éramos felices pero no lo sabíamos, and the novels Duermevela, La casa de la belleza, La mujer que hablaba sola and her recent Las huérfanas. This book portrays Myriam de Nogales, the author’s mother: “a woman, unattainable in her skills and talents, passionate, caustic, wounded and wounding, brilliant”. Melba Escobar will talk to Ana Cristina Restrepo about this novel that delves into the family past, origins, the creation of a female identity, and the place of the dead, who never die in the minds of the living.
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Event 15
José Zuleta Ortiz with Juan Diego Mejía
The other versions of the events
Museo de Arte Religioso
Read moreFor 15 years, José Zuleta Ortiz ran the Libertad Bajo Palabra programme, a series of writing workshops for convicts in Colombian prisons. He won the National Literature Prize for a novel published by the Ministry of Culture in 2022 for Lo que no fue dicho. His new novel, Una versión de los hechos, tells the story of a friendship among three characters: a prisoner from a women’s prison, a literature teacher, and a publisher who returns from exile in Spain. These intertwined lives form the narrative thread that leads to a reflection on complex and powerful ideas: political correction, justice within the law, art as a way to liberation, clandestinity and imprisonment, and versions of events that lie behind the official histories. In conversation with Juan Diego Mejía.
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Event 17
Gioconda Belli in conversation with Melba Escobar
Literature and resistance
Museo de Arte Religioso
Read moreThe acclaimed Nicaraguan poet and novelist Gioconda Belli is also known for her commitment to her country’s political and social struggle. Her works explore matters such as feminism, love and revolution, combining a poetic sensibility with the denunciation of injustice. Belli participated actively in the Sandinista movement, something that has formed an important influence on her work, given that in it women held a central place as agents of change and resistance. Over the course of her career she has won numerous awards, including the 1978 Casa de las Américas Prize and the Biblioteca Breve Prize in 2008. Her most famous works are The Inhabited Woman (1994) and El país de las mujeres (2010), which are about the search for identity and the struggle for freedom in contexts of oppression. Her latest book is Un silencio lleno de murmullos, a story about absence, silence and family links; after the death of Valeria in Spain, her daughter travels from Nicaragua to look after the things that she has left behind. Surrounded by these objects, Penélope symbolically meets her mother again, and starts to reflect on what was left unsaid between them. In conversation with Melba Escobar.
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Principal Sponsor
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