Hay Festival Cartagena 2026

Sani Ladan (Cameroon) is an anti-racism activist, pan-Africanist, human rights defender and expert in international relations. He is also the creator of the podcast África en 1 click, designed to offer Spanish speakers a view of the African continent, talking about its history, literature, culture and geopolitics. He is also the author of the book La luna está en Duala y mi destino en el conocimiento, which tells the story of his migratory experience, from his hometown of Duala to Spain, aged just 15. En conversación con Claudia Ayola.

In Noche negra, Pilar Quintana (Colombia) returns to the untamed and exuberant Colombian Pacific that she portrayed so convincingly in the acclaimed novel La perra. In her latest book, the protagonist finds herself alone for four days in a setting that is both terrifying and fascinating. She feels threatened not only by nature, but by the people around her. As well as her work as a writer, Quintana has recently edited the second issue of the Biblioteca de Escritoras Colombianas. She talks to Pilar Reyes.

Federico Guzmán (Mexico) won the 2022 Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Grant with his project Sí hay tal lugar: viaje a las ruinas de las utopías latinoamericanas. To write the book, he travelled to seven places in Latin America which have been the sites of utopian projects: Fordlandia, Pátzcuaro, Nueva Germania….Jordan Salama (USA) travelled the length of the River Magdalena, from its source to its mouth, writing a log of the past and present of Colombia’s most important river. The two authors will talk about their writings with Jaime Abello Banfi.

Andrew O'Hagan (United Kingdom) talks to Elvira Liceaga about his latest book, Caledonian Road, the «definitive novel» about post-Brexit Great Britain. A novel with incisive insight into current social structures that builds a net of diverse characters that act as a mirror of British society.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Noche de salsa brava con La Pambelé. La de la salsa más callejera, la reivindicativa, esa que bebe de Willie Colón y Héctor Lavoe, del Rubén Blades que grababa con Colón. Deudora del sonido que puso a bailar en las calles de Nueva York y los barrios del Caribe en los años setenta, esta orquesta originaria de Bogotá promete hacer lo propio con los asistentes al concierto inaugural del Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2026. Presentan Nací mestizo, álbum publicado a finales de 2024.

PULEP Code: MET232

Noche de salsa brava con La Pambelé. La de la salsa más callejera, la reivindicativa, esa que bebe de Willie Colón y Héctor Lavoe, del Rubén Blades que grababa con Colón. Deudora del sonido que puso a bailar en las calles de Nueva York y los barrios del Caribe en los años setenta, esta orquesta originaria de Bogotá promete hacer lo propio con los asistentes al concierto inaugural del Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2026. Presentan Nací mestizo, álbum publicado a finales de 2024.

PULEP Code: MET232

Lo que nunca te dije, Un silencio prohibido, MalEducada and Descubriendo a Miranda, Antonio Ortiz has become one of the most popular authors of young adult fiction in Colombia. The reason is simple: he speaks to their hearts, tackling the internal conflicts and concerns that are most relevant to them: bullying, loneliness and the breakup of relationships. It is with stories that cover such issues that he has been attracting so many young readers. This will be a close, enjoyable encounter that encourages young people to laugh at themselves, recognize their emotions, and discover how literature can help them understand themselves better.

The Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias reading clubs offer intimate encounters with a selection of festival guests. These are spaces for an in-depth dialogue about authors’ recent work. At this event, Laura Restrepo (Colombia) will talk to Ana María Aponte about Soy la daga y soy la herida.

Please read the book before attending

Gambote también puede convertirse en un libro: las aventuras, historias y tradiciones del día a día pueden plasmarse en cuentos breves rebosantes de imaginación. Rosmery Armenteros conduce este taller que fomenta la creatividad y el sentimiento de pertenencia a una comunidad de quienes tomen parte en él. Partiendo desde la palabra hablada, y combinando juegos, narraciones orales y escritura, cada participante creará un cuento breve inspirado en su territorio, y se construirá un Árbol de historias colectivas de Gambote.

As well as being three of Latin America’s most renowned writers, Leila Guerriero Argentina), Leonardo Padura (Cuba) and Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Colombia) are all El País columnists. They will talk to Javier Moreno Barber, exdirector of the Spanish newspaper, about how they tackle writing, why it is so important for the reputation of a newspaper to have high profile columnists, and how they contribute to maintaining the narrative, cultural and social bridge between Latin America and Spain.

Mia Couto (Mozambique) is the first Portuguese language writer to win the PEN/Nabokov Prize. He became well known for works such as Sleepwalking Land and the Sands of the Emperor trilogy. He has received many distinctions, including the Camões Prize, the Guadalajara Book Fair Award for Literature in Romance Languages, and he was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. His most recent book, O mapeador do ausências, is his most autobiographical to date, telling the story of a Mozambican intellectual who returns to his home city, where he confronts memories of his childhood and his father, while he meets a magnetic woman with whom he shares a tangled past. In conversation with Pilar Quintana.

Simultaneous interpretation from Portuguese to Spanish available

Fernando Arancón (Spain) is the Editor of El orden mundial, the most read Spanish-language outlet covering international affairs and analysis. Its goal is not just to say what is happening, but why, and it has just published the book Las fuerzas que mueven el mundo, an illustrated work that uses maps, graphs and accessible language to explain 21st-century geopolitics and global economics. He talks to Claudia Gurisatti..

Frank Báez (Dominican Republic), Cristina Bendek (Colombia) and Giuseppe Caputo (Colombia) are from different places, and their writing too occupies different latitudes — poetry and non-fiction in the first case, novels and essays in the case of Bendek, and novels and also poetry in Caputo’s. But their creative processes all take place by the shores of the same sea: the Caribbean, with images and topics bathed by the same sun. Bajo otras luces, by Báez, is the portrait of a region and a book about exile, a poet’s personal view of a territory. Los cristales de la sal, by Bendek, talks about returning to one’s roots, to San Andrés, where the protagonist starts to question her identity and relationship with the island. La frontera encantada is a novel that is about the foundations of life, and one that acts as a kind of thousand and one nights in Barranquilla. In conversation with Yeniter Poleo.

A look at the world through non-hegemonic narratives. We will get to know more about the diversity of the great African continent with Sani Ladan (Cameroon), an expert in international relations and author of the podcast África en 1 click, and the philosopher and writer Karima Ziali (Morocco) will talk about the migratory links between Spain and North Africa, and the reality of the diaspora. In conversation with Javier Ortiz Cassiani.

Culture should be accessible to all and local art deserves a higher profile. This is the thinking behind the work of Colartis, the Corporación Pulso Creativo, which offers artistic education to young people who have limited access to cultural spaces. In this practical workshop, participants will reconstruct the memory of their territories through images and texts, and look at how to preserve local narratives through the arts. Workshop lead by Dayro Carrasquilla.

Starting the workshop with the question “If you had your own media outlet, what issue would you put on the front cover?”, Rodrigo Paredes introduces the fanzine —an alternative format for popular communication—, and each participant will create their own using the technique of collage. This is an exercise for exploring creative skills and channelling energies through art.

Respira ciencia is a collection of illustrated stories whose goal is to bring science to children. This is a project run by Ciencia Magnetica, two of whose members are Mónica Diago and Pedro Caballero, which seeks to awaken scientific curiosity among the young. Because often, children are only a story away from discovering the world of science.

The poet, storyteller, writer, activist and teacher Mary Grueso is the first Afro-descendent woman to be a member of the Colombian Academy of the Language. This pioneer in Afro-Colombian children’s literature, who has black children as the protagonists of her stories, is the author of entertaining books such as Agüela, se fue la nuna, about a child who wants to understand what has happened to the moon, and the modern classic La muñeca negra, a narrative poem that is now an illustrated book.

The Brazilian writer, publisher and translator Joca Reiners Terron has written the novel O morte e o meteoro. In it, the last members of the Kaajapukugi tribe, barely surviving in the heart of the Amazon, are sent to Oaxaca, in Mexico, as political refugees. Just days before they arrive, the anthropologist responsible for the transfer dies, and then begins a story full of mystery, overflowing imagination and adventures. In conversation with Lewis Alexandra León Baños.

Against all expectations, since 2020 we have seen a large and growing number of new publishing houses opening all over Latin America. Three publishers present their exciting projects: Óscar Daniel Campo (Himpar Editores, Colombia), Alejandro Villate (Yarumo Libros, Colombia) and Laura. C. Vela (Ediciones Comisura, España).