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Cristina Bendek in conversation with Yunuen Tapia Torres
Other stories from the Indies Archive
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UNAM Centro Cultural Morelia
Otras historias del Archivo de Indias is an anthology that compiles texts by ten renowned Ibero-American authors who have created works of fiction based on documents held in the Archivo General de Indias. This project by the Hay Festival and CAF aims to bring the archive’s vast collection of documents to the general public and to offer a critical and diverse perspective on the multitude of stories that record and challenge the colonial memory of the Americas. One of the writers taking part in the initiative, the Colombian Cristina Bendek, will discuss the anthology with Yunuen Tapia Torres, director of UNAM ENES Morelia.
Free event with open admission
Coorganized with ENES Morelia-UNAM and with the support of CAF
Pol Guasch in conversation with Mara Rahab Bautista López
Words for saying goodbye
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Librería Traspatio
“I would have appreciated a note.” Thus begins Reliquia, beneath which lies a question: is it possible to find the words for a farewell that never took place? Ten years after his father’s suicide, Pol Guaschwrites his first work of non-fiction, in which he seeks to understand and reconstruct, while reflecting on farewells and on those who leave without saying goodbye. Yet “sometimes there are no final words to bring anything to a close”. In conversation with Mara Rahab Bautista López. Introduced by Mineli González Torres.
Alfredo Guzmán Cayetano in conversation with Karla Cerriteño Chávez and Sue Meneses Eternot
The Tiger’s Wing
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UNAM Centro Cultural Morelia
At the start of this decade, UNAM revived the poetry collection El Ala del Tigre, which aims to showcase the linguistic, stylistic and geographical riches of Mexican literature through bilingual editions in Spanish and indigenous languages. The Mazahua author Alfredo Guzmán Cayetano, winner of the 2025 UNAM-SECTEI Young Poets’ Prize, will be in conversation with Karla Cerriteño Chávez, a graduate from the Intercultural Literature program from UNAM ENES Morelia, and Sue Meneses Eternot, full-time professor at the Intercultural Literature program at UNAM ENES Morelia, about Te encontraré en el bonrro, Mizhokjimi mío, recently published in the collection.
Elaine Vilar Madruga in conversation with Luis Felipe Rodríguez
The horror of the rainforest
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UNAM Centro Cultural Morelia
Dozens of women writers have turned to horror literature to put into words some of the terrible realities that still haunt Latin America: violence, abuse, and all their complexities. An excellent example of this literary trend is La piel hembra, the new novel by the prolific Elaine Vilar Madruga (Cuba), who, following the success of El cielo de la selva, returns with a dark tale centred on two main characters: the jungle and women. Her imagined forest is mystical, sombre, lush and nightmarish. In conversation with Luis Felipe Rodríguez, coordinator of UNAM Centro Cultural Morelia.
The prolific Cuban author Elaine Vilar Madrugawill be talking to a group of secondary school pupils about Un globo rojo en tu ventana. As well as discussing the book, she will share insights into her creative process as a writer and offer various tips to help the young people learn how to create their own stories.
Pol Guasch in conversation with Margarita Aguilar Urbán
On mourning
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DIF Plan Vida
“I would have appreciated a note.” Thus begins Reliquia, beneath which lies a question: is it possible to find the words for a farewell that never took place? Ten years after his father’s suicide, Pol Guaschwrites his first work of non-fiction, in which he seeks to understand and reconstruct, whilst reflecting on farewells and on those who leave without saying goodbye. Yet “sometimes there are no final words to bring anything to a close”. Event in conversation with Margarita Aguilar Urbán.
Eley Williams in conversation with Germán González
Playing with Words
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UAQ, Biblioteca Campus Centro Histórico - Dirección General de Bibliotecas y Servicios Digitales de Información
Selected by Granta in 2023 as one of the Best of Young British Novelists, Eley Williams has already established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British fiction through story collections such as Attrib. and Other Stories and the novel The Liar’s Dictionary, named by The Guardian as one of the Best Books of 2021 and winner of the Betty Trask Prize. A writer for whom language always takes centre stage, Williams delights in shifting registers, playing with rhythm, and experimenting with a wit that is as singular as it is infectious.
Event in English With the support of British Council Free event for the university community
Manuel Marsol in conversation with Andrés Ocadiz y Paulina Oropeza
Finding one’s father in the stars
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Universidad Anáhuac
Manuel Marsol’s (Spain) father passed away when he was just 11 years old. This event has left its mark on the work of this illustrator, who expresses his affection for his father through memories and through fantasy. He did so in the illustrated book Astro, an allegory about the love between a father and a son, told through the story of a stranded astronaut who finds himself on a distant planet under the care of an alien. And he has done so once again in El cielo en una estancia, where a photograph of a penalty kick taken by his father in 1970—capturing the ball suspended in mid-air, leaving us forever unable to know whether it ended in a goal—becomes the starting point for an exploration of childhood memory: a song, a few films, the penalty Roberto Baggio famously blasted over the bar, unanswered questions, and spheres spinning through space for eternity.
Free event for the university community
With the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
Javier Serena in conversation with Silvia Ruiz Tresgallo
On literature, farewells and the creative process
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UAQ, Biblioteca Campus Centro Histórico - Dirección General de Bibliotecas y Servicios Digitales de Información
The Spaniard Javier Serenais the editor of the acclaimed journal of literary criticism and thought Cuadernos hispanoamericanos, which specialises in Spanish-language literature from both continents. He is also the author of several novels, the most recent of which is Apuntes para una despedida, the story of a relationship marked by desire, frustration and inevitable loss. He will be speaking to Silvia Ruiz Tresgallo(Mexico) about the interplay between his editorial work and the creativity behind his works of fiction.
Pol Guasch in conversation with Julieta Díaz Barrón and Paulina Macías
Words for saying goodbye
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Tec de Monterrey, Punto Blanco
“I would have appreciated a note.” Thus begins Reliquia, beneath which lies a question: is it possible to find the words for a farewell that never took place? Ten years after his father’s suicide, Pol Guaschwrites his first work of non-fiction, in which he seeks to understand and reconstruct, while reflecting on farewells and on those who leave without saying goodbye. Yet “sometimes there are no final words to bring anything to a close”.
Rosa Ramírez Mazaheri in conversation with Iliana Padilla
Fragments of a frontier identity
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UNAM ENES
There are books that are best understood through the author’s life story. Rosa Ramírez Mazaheriwas born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa; she emigrated to the United States at the age of thirteen and graduated from Smith College, where she studied Spanish and Latin American Studies, specialising in subversive poetry written by women and queer people in Latin America. The protagonist of Material inflamable is also a Mexican woman studying at a university in Massachusetts; a young woman who reflects on her roots and mixes Spanish and English in her writing — although, what is your mother tongue when you have crossed the border at a young age? A novel that swings between reality and delirium, drawing us into the protagonist’s internal struggle with mental health and addiction. In conversation withIliana Padilla.
Liliana Blum in conversation with Felipe Bohorquez
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Universidad Anáhuac
In a country where literature often tackles the most horrific forms of violence in society, Liliana Blum(Mexico) has surprised everyone by doing the same with the most sordid aspects of human nature. Pandora explored sexual paraphilias, perversions and relationships rife with abuse, fatphobia and social complicity. She has since continued to delve into the macabre with El monstruo pentápodo and Cara de liebre. A decade later, she has just reissued Pandora, with a foreword written by her and previously unpublished chapters. An unmissable opportunity to reopen the box of the monstrously human.
The British-Ugandan poet Nick Makoha will run a creative poetry workshop based on the Black Ekphrastic Mode: an exercise in reframing our perspective, reimagining the art and music we know, and from there finding our own poetic voice. In other words, responding to canonical Western art with creativity from a perspective of otherness. Because while Makoha views the world through the lens of blackness, someone else might adopt a feminist, community-based or indigenous perspective. The aim is to begin creating by altering our view of the world and art.
Gwendoline Riley in conversation with Raquel Ortiz Ledesma and María José Vázquez de la Mora
My Phantoms
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Tec de Monterrey, Punto Blanco
A bond that both connects and divides a mother and daughter, a relationship that shifts between affection and cruelty, tenderness and mutual resentment, between what is frustrating and what remains unresolved. In My Phantoms, Gwendoline Riley (UK) portrays the complex relationship between Helen Grant and her daughter Bridge, driven by a question that lingers to the very last page: why did things never quite work out? She will join Raquel Ortiz Ledesma and María José Vázquez de la Mora to discuss the uncomfortable realities of family relationships.
The geographies of María Dueñas(Spain) place the protagonist of Por si un día volvemos in Oran in the 1920s. Although she has, on the face of it, crossed the Mediterranean to escape poverty, every flight has more than one motive, and as the plot unfolds, we will peel back all the layers of her story. The author of The Time In Between, Las hijas del capitán and Sira retains those characteristic elements —migratory movements, courageous women as protagonists— that have made her one of the most important and widely read writers in the Spanish-speaking world.
Emiliano Monge in conversation with Enrique Díaz Álvarez
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Cineteca Rosalío Solano
En lengua privadais a collection of short stories byEmiliano Mongethat blurs the limits between fiction and non-fiction. These tales are written in italics, because the author of Los vivos, No contar todo and Las tierras arrasadas constructs the texts in this book using techniques typical of the essay, literary journalism and biography, while playing with language, ideas and experience.
Book club with Iveth Luna Flores and Paula Astorga
Neblina afuera
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Casa Hay Festival — SURA (salón lateral)
The Hay Festival Queretaro book clubs offer intimate events with a selection of the festival guests. These are spaces to talk in greater depth about these authors’ most recent works. At this event, Iveth Luna Flores(Mexico) will talk to Paula Astorgaabout Neblina afuera.
South to North Conversations: between memory and identity
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Teatro de la Ciudad
After becoming the youngest author to win the prestigious Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai(India) went on to publish her next novel straight away. However, The Solitude of Sonia and Sunny comes after two decades of letting her memories of India simmer. As in her previous novel, the story is set in both the United States and India, but also in Mexico, where she lived for a time, which helped her to understand American influence from a different perspective. Sonia and Sunny’s story is one of love, migration and rootlessness and, above all, of the different kinds of loneliness that emerge on the periphery.
Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available
Book Club with Julia Didriksson and Gina Jaramillo
Talking about love
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Casa Hay Festival — SURA (salón lateral)
The Hay Festival Querétaro book clubs offer intimate gatherings with a selection of festival guests and they provide a space for in-depth discussion of writers’ most recent works. At this event, Julia Didriksson(Mexico) will talk to Gina Jaramillo(Mexico) about Cuando hablamos de amor.
Pol Guasch, Iveth Luna Flores and Manuel Marsol in conversation with Miguel de la Cruz
Memories of a father
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Cineteca Rosalío Solano
There are stories best told in the first person. From memory, from the wound. Such as Reliquia by Pol Guasch(Spain), a non-fiction account of the absence of a father who chose to take his own life; Neblina Afuera by Iveth Luna Flores(Mexico), a work that explores family, work and writing as forms of resistance; and El cielo en una estancia by Manuel Marsol(Spain), in which a photograph of a prison taken by his father sets off a journey along unexpected paths filled with celestial bodies and harmony in the spheres. And so, when one looks back, one realises that memories are often linked to the bond with one’s father, and to everything that surrounds it.
Price: $10.00 (MXN)
With the support of the Ramon Llull Institute and Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
In a country where literature often tackles the most horrific forms of violence in society, Liliana Blum(Mexico) has surprised everyone by doing the same with the most sordid aspects of human nature. Pandora explored sexual paraphilias, perversions and relationships rife with abuse, fatphobia and social complicity. She has since continued to delve into the macabre with El monstruo pentápodo and Cara de liebre. A decade later, she has just reissued Pandora, with a foreword written by her and previously unpublished chapters. An unmissable opportunity to reopen the box of the monstrously human.
Rosa Beltrán, Cristina Bendek and Socorro Venegas in conversation
Anti-colonial readings: Don’t give up!
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Patio de la Delegación del Centro Histórico
No Give Up Maan! ¡No te rindas!by Hazel Robinson Abrahams, forms part of UNAM’s Vindictas collection. A novel about the Colombian Caribbean set in the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina. A forthright critique of institutions and conventions. Cristina Bendek, also from San Andrés and author of the introduction to this edition; Rosa Beltrán, Coordinator of Cultural Outreach at UNAM; and Socorro Venegas, Head of the Directorate-General for Publications and Publishing Promotion, discuss this work, seminal in the literature of the Caribbean southwest.
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Explanada de la Basílica de Soriano, Municipio de Colón
Un halcón bajo mi ventana marks journalist and writer Lydia Cacho’s (Mexico) first foray into fiction for adults. A coming-of-age novel about the power of tenderness and friendship, it pays tribute to the voices of the girls and women who paved the way in the struggle for a fairer world. Julieta is a fourteen-year-old girl searching for meaning in her life in 1960s Mexico. Everything changes when she attends the 1968 marches and the Halconazo of 1971 alongside her mother; historic moments that lead her to become involved in clandestine meetings, revolutionary movements and a decade of thrilling revelations.
Yásnaya Elena A. Gil, Mario Arriagada, Kiran Desai, Shaun Walker and Eley Williams in conversation with David Marcial Pérez Muñoz
Maps for ourselves
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Cineteca Rosalío Solano
Maps are never neutral. They define borders, reflect power relations, record conflicts, and reveal the ways societies imagine and organise the world. At a time of profound geopolitical change, shaped by territorial disputes, migration, the climate crisis, and shifting global power dynamics, maps have taken on renewed significance. Yasnaya Elena A. Gil (Mexico), Mario Arriagada (México), Kiran Desai (India), Shaun Walker (UK), and Eley Williams (UK) will each offer a different way of reading and narrating the world. Each will choose a map—physical, cultural, linguistic, or emotional—and discuss how these maps shape our understanding of identity, memory, territory, and belonging.
Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available
Price: $10.00 (MXN)
With the support of Open Society Foundations and the British Council
Daniel Saldaña París and Javier Serena in conversation with Javier García del Moral
Eccles Institute at the British Library event: inevitable tensions
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Patio de la Delegación del Centro Histórico
When you begin reading The Dance and the Fire by the Mexican author Daniel Saldaña París, winner of the 2020 Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Literature Prize, and Apuntes para una despedida by the Spanish author Javier Serena, editor of the magazine Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, there is a tension that emanates from the pages and envelops you like mist. There is a constant sense of menace in the relationship between three friends who are reunited and share a past that remains unresolved (The Dance and the Fire); and the same is true of the final stages of a romantic relationship heading for its end (Apuntes para una despedida).
Price: $10.00 (MXN)
With the support of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania at the British Library
Book club with Marta Jiménez Serrano and Adriana Martínez
Oxygen
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Casa Hay Festival — SURA (salón lateral)
The Hay Festival Queretaro book clubs offer intimate events with a selection of the festival guests. These are spaces to talk in greater depth about these authors’ most recent works. At this event, Marta Jiménez Serrano(Spain) will talk to Adriana Martínezabout Oxígeno.
Book to be read before attending
Price: $10.00 (MXN)
With the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
Mara Rahab Bautista López and Gustavo Puerta Leisse in conversation with Melissa Pérez
Publishing Talent: roads to independence
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Casa Hay Festival — SURA (salón lateral)
Two independent publishing projects, two ways of life. Mara Rahab Bautista López(Mexico) co-manages Originaria, which promotes contemporary literary works written by women in non-hegemonic languages; Gustavo Puerta Leisse(Venezuela) is the co-founder of Editorial Modernas el Embudo, which specialises in children’s and young adult literature. The two will talk to Melissa Pérez(Peru) about their motivations for undertaking such personal projects, the rewards they have reaped and the disappointments they have encountered throughout their publishing careers.
Lydia Cacho in conversation with Felipe Restrepo Pombo
A hawk under my window
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Cineteca Rosalío Solano
Un halcón bajo mi ventana marks journalist and writer Lydia Cacho’s (Mexico) first foray into fiction for adults. A coming-of-age novel about the power of tenderness and friendship, it pays tribute to the voices of the girls and women who paved the way in the struggle for a fairer world. Julieta is a fourteen-year-old girl searching for meaning in her life in 1960s Mexico. Everything changes when she attends the 1968 marches and the Halconazo of 1971 alongside her mother; historic moments that lead her to become involved in clandestine meetings, revolutionary movements and a decade of thrilling revelations.
Julia Didriksson in conversation with Isabel Posadas
Let’s talk about love
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Patio de la Delegación del Centro Histórico
What are we talking about when we talk about love? We are questioning the normative ways of experiencing it, so that we can see it as something many-sided, open to question and with many faces. The non-fiction Cuando hablamos de amor is a collective effort to rethink love and to understand it beyond the romantic couple. The feminist thinker and digital activist Julia Didriksson (Mexico) reflects in the anthology on digital romantic solace, an escape route to evading responsibility for our romantic failures.
Presentation of stories and illustrations at Armonía e Inclusión
Imagining Donxu’s child
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Alameda Hidalgo
One question has captured the imagination of dozens of children and teenagers in Queretaro in recent weeks: what is a day in the life of Donxu the doll’s child like? Having received countless stories and drawings brimming with imagination, the time has come to present them to the public.
Pedro Salazar Ugarte and Carissa Véliz in conversation with Juan Carlos Pérez
Cuadernos hispanoamericanos
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Teatro de la Ciudad
The journal Cuadernos hispanoamericanos promotes knowledge and exchange among writers and thinkers of different generations and nationalities, united by a shared language and a literary tradition enriched by these diverse origins. In this special conversation, Pedro Salazar Ugarte(Mexico) and Carissa Véliz(Spain/Mexico/United Kingdom) discuss their works — Totalitarismo total and Prophecy, respectively — and their ideas with Juan Carlos Pérez(Colombia).
Jeremías Gamboa, Catherine Lacey and Gwendoline Riley in conversation with Elvira Liceaga
Crooked lines
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Cineteca Rosalío Solano
Life rarely turns out the way we imagine it will. Sometimes this means returning to square one, as happens to the protagonist of El principio del mundo, a novel by Jeremías Gamboa(Peru), who returns to his native Peru at the age of 33 in search of refuge. At other times, we swim in circles, in spaces that ought not to exist; such as the one created by Catherine Lacey(USA) in The Möbius Book, where the narrative folds in on itself, blending memory and fiction, with no beginning and no end. And sometimes, as in My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley (UK), the relationship between mother and daughter becomes fertile ground for frustration and estrangement. They will be joined by Elvira Liceaga(Mexico) to discuss the narrative paths each has found to navigate life’s twists and turns.
Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available
Yásnaya Elena A. Gil and Cristina Bendek in conversation with Javier García del Moral
Other stories from the Archivo de Indias
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Patio de la Delegación del Centro Histórico
Otras historias del Archivo de Indias is an anthology that compiles texts by ten renowned Ibero-American authors who have created works of fiction based on documents held in the Archivo General de Indias. This project by the Hay Festival and CAF aims to bring the archive’s vast collection of documents to the general public and to offer a critical and diverse perspective on the multitude of stories that record and challenge the colonial memory of the Americas. Two of the writers taking part in the initiative, the Mexican Yásnaya Elena A. Gil and the Colombian Cristina Bendek, discuss the anthology with Javier García del Moral(Spain).
Martín Solares and Nick Makoha in conversation with Gina Jaramillo
Start writing with this advice
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Cineteca Rosalío Solano
A conversation for readers and aspiring writers. For all those who find themselves full of questions when reading a work of fiction or poetry. Or when writing one. The novelist, publisher and workshop leader Martín Solares(Mexico) is the author of El fantasma de las novelas, an essay in which he proposes quick and creative tools for unravelling the secrets of fiction. The poet and playwright Nick Makoha (Uganda/UK) regularly offers creative writing workshops specializing in memory, resilience, and "imaginative renewal", the process of renewing creativity, breaking free from stagnant thought patterns, and discovering new ways of seeing the world.
Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available
Rosa Ramírez Mazaheri and Elaine Vilar Madruga in conversation with Elvira Liceaga
Writing from the abyss
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Jardín Guerrero
The abyss can take many forms and be explored from various perspectives. Proof of this can be found in Rosa Ramírez Mazaheri(Mexico/Iran) and Elaine Vilar Madruga(Cuba), who approach the darkness from two completely different realities. The former’s journey begins with introspection, through a fragmented narrative in which the protagonist of Material inflamable reflects on identity, family roots, mental health and addiction. La piel hembra is a recent example of Latin American horror literature, where everyday darkness blends with the fantastic; where the jungle inhabited by its female protagonists is mystical, gloomy, exuberant and nightmarish.
Marta Jiménez Serrano in conversation with Romina Pons
When I breathed death
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Patio de la Delegación del Centro Histórico
“Oxygen is the book I never wanted to write.” The sentence might be read as a literary device, but it takes on a different significance when one realises that Marta Jiménez Serrano(Spain) was on the verge of dying alongside her partner. A leak in the boiler, carbon monoxide poisoning, waking up drowsy, making her way to the bathroom, falling, losing consciousness. What could have been the end becomes a reconstruction encompassing the accident, its consequences and the life that made it possible, including the precarious circumstances that triggered it.
Price: $10.00 (MXN)
With the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
