(various sessions)

17:00 TABLE 1: Bogotá39. The Hay Festival and independent Iberoamerican publishers celebrate good writing. A co-publishing model.

Cristina Fuentes La Roche and Margarita Valencia present the Bogotá39 Anthology project, which will be published in January 2018 simultaneously by those publishers participating in Publishing Talent, all of whom will be on the stage.

18:00 TABLE 2: To counteract excess, good judgement. Does the spread of self-publishing threaten the publisher’s traditional role?

Moderator: Jacobo Zanella. Participants: Martín Fernández, Casa Editorial HUM/Estuario Editora (Uruguay); and Gabriela Alemán, El Fakir Ediciones (Ecuador).

19:30 TABLE 3: Who are we publishing for? Who reads us? New and old readers. Independent publishing’s target readerships.

Moderator: Nubia Macías. Participants: Joan Tarrida, Galaxia Gutenberg (Spain); and Andrea Palet, Laurel Editores (Chile).

The Hay Festival wishes to recognise the great cultural work of Hispano-American bookshops, paying homage on this occasion to its associate Cálamo bookshop (Zaragoza, Spain), on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. This is a good time to reflect on the present and future of the bookselling trade. Ana Cañellas, Paco Goyanes, Brenda Navarro and Manuel Vilas in conversation with Cristina Fuentes la Roche.

Otras historias del Archivo de Indias, edited by Erna von der Walde, is an anthology compiling texts by ten recognised Ibero-American authors, who have created short stories based on documents preserved in the Archivo General de Indias. This Hay Festival and CAF project aims to make public some of the archives’ huge store of documents, rescuing some of the many stories, from a great variety of voices, recorded there. Two of the writers participating in the initiative, the Colombians Cristina Bendek and Carlos Granés, will discuss the anthology with Cristina Fuentes La Roche, International Director of the Hay Festival. The book will be published in September 2026.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Cursiva, the Penguin Random House Publishing Group’s teaching platform, and the Hay Festival, winner of the 2020 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and the Humanities, are working together on the diploma in Cultural Management, a digital course for learning about all the facets of creating a festival and running one’s own cultural management projects. Cristina Fuentes La Roche (Spain), International Director of the Hay Festival; Pilar Reyes Colombia), Editorial Director of Alfaguara and Penguin Randome House España; and Lina Rodríguez (Colombia), General Manager of the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival, will talk to David Lara about this course and the reasons why cultural management is a field that is on the rise, and its importance for the arts.

We are interested in cultural management projects that manage to unite quality programming with inclusion and innovation. Book Bunk (in Nairobi, Kenya) is precisely that: a cultural project for the recovery of public libraries with profoundly positive impacts on the communities where it works. The Hay Festival International Director, Cristina Fuentes La Roche (Spain), Wanjiru Koinange (Kenya) and Angela Wachuka (Kenya) will talk to Margarita Valencia about the challenges of their projects and about international collaboration among countries of the South.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday events will be free for people who has an ID expeded in the Bolívar Department. You must request their courtesy tickets at the box office of the Hay Festival (CCCI) showing your ID, between 22 and 28 of January.

A special opportunity to find out about the working model of the Hay Festival with Cristina Fuentes La Roche, OBE, International Director of the Hay Festival, where she has been working since 2005. She founded and has been running the Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias and Segovia since 2006, the Hay Festival Mexico since 2010 and the Hay Festival Arequipa since 2015. She has directed specific projects for the promotion of new authors, such as: Bogota39 (2007 and 2017), Beirut39 (2010), Africa39 (2014) and Aarhus39 (2018). She has worked for Canning House, the Latin American forum in London that promotes cultural exchange among the UK, Latin America and Spain. She was in London for five years at Arts and Business, an organisation that builds alliances between the private sector and the field of culture. She studied Business and Administration at the Autonomous University of Madrid and has a Master’s in Cultural Management from Birkbeck College, London.

Participating at this event are four outstanding experts in the field of cultural management, each one with her or his own unique perspective: Edward de Ybarra (Peru), Arequipan filmmaker, graphic artist and cultural manager; Lola Shoneyin (Nigeria), writer and activist, founder of the Book Buzz Foundation, an initiative that promotes cultural reading spaces, such as the Aké Arts & Book Festival and the Kaduna Book & Arts Festival; Víctor Vich, a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009, lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, where he coordinates the Master’s in Cultural Studies, and Head Researcher at the Institute of Peruvian Studies; and Cristina Fuentes La Roche (Spain), International Director of the Hay Festival. They will explore, among other matters, the challenges and achievements of their respective fields, and will discuss the importance of culture as an engine of social transformation and a bridge for promoting understanding among different communities.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

An important talk on burning issues, with three proposals for the future to build a better world, by participants in the festival who, from their respective trenches and countries, raise problems and solutions needed for a world in crisis. With educator and writer Elisa Guerra (Mexico), environmental activist and feminist Yayo Herrero (Spain) and social leader and activist Paula Marcela Moreno (Colombia), in conversation with Hay Festival Director Cristina Fuentes La Roche.

En el marco de la conmemoración del 500 aniversario de la fundación de Santa Marta, así como del 240 aniversario del Archivo General de Indias y su proceso de digitalización impulsado por CAF, el Hay Festival presenta su más reciente iniciativa editorial: Otras historias del Archivo. Editada por Erna von der Walde y publicada por Anagrama, la antología reunirá textos de diez reconocidos autores de España y América Latina, quienes construirán relatos de ficción a partir de documentos conservados en el Archivo General de Indias. La publicación verá la luz en el 2026 y se conversará sobre ella en los Hay Festival de España, Perú, México y Colombia. Los nombres de los autores se anunciarán en el evento.

Participarán de esta conversación la directora del archivo, Esther Cruces; la ensayista, traductora e investigadora colombiana Erna von der Walde; y Sergio Díaz-Granados, presidente ejecutivo de CAF - banco de desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe - quienes conversarán con Cristina Fuentes La Roche, directora internacional del Hay Festival.

We talk about literature, literary production in non-traditional formats, and the intersections of art and writing, on how to narrate artistic experience through words, and also via cultural management projects. With Eva Piquer (Catalonia, Spain), the author of 13 books, former Literary Manager at the Thassalia publishing house and currently the Editor of the cultural magazine Catorze; and María Ptqk (Spain), cultural researcher and art curator with a doctorate in Artistic Research, who specialises in the ecological and the technoscientific, with a post-cultural perspective. In conversation with Cristina Fuentes La Roche, the festival director.

In 2022, Hay Festival and the British Museum came together to organise the anthology Volver a contar: Escritores de América Latina en los archivos del Museo Británico, for which a group of ten writers examined narratives about the past through a collection of Latin American objects in the museum never seen in public before. In 2023 we presented the anthology Exploradores, soñadores y ladrones, in which six authors looked at the museum’s collections in order to create new compilation of texts that question and reimagine the predominant narratives. With Felipe Restrepo Pombo (Colombia), Philippe Sands (United Kingdom) and Gabriela Wiener (Peru), in conversation with Cristina Fuentes La Roche (Spain).

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available

Justicia is the first novel by Janne Teller (Denmark) in 11 years. Known far and wide for books such as Nothing, the writer has needed two decades to finish this book, which she began when she was working as a UN diplomat. She will talk to Cristina Fuentes La Roche about this book, which has what the author calls “the mother of all wars” —the Palestinian-Israeli conflict— in the background. It tells the story of the complex relationship between a father, a UN representative, and his activist daughter, whose killing he struggles to come to terms with. In conversation with Cristina Fuentes La Roche.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

We celebrate ten years of the Hay Festival in Peru with the publication of a commemorative book, which compiles 15 memorable conversations that captured the interest of the public as part of the festival. We talk to the book’s editor, Dante Trujillo (Perú), the author Jeremías Gamboa (Perú), the photographer Daniel Mordzinski (Argentina), the author Karina Pacheco (Perú) and the journalist Clara Elvira Ospina (Colombia) about the positive and inspiring effects of the conversations that the Hay Festival Arequipa has made possible in the decade it has been running.

Global children’s charity Plan UK introduces Because I am a Girl, the world’s biggest campaign for girls’ rights. With education, skills and the right support, girls in the developing world can make choices over their future and be a force for creating lasting change. Joanne Harris, author of the Rune fantasy series and the bestselling Chocolat trilogy, shares her personal stories as an inspiration for other women and girls worldwide to be able to fulfil their aspirations. She is joined by Plan UK’s Director of Programmes, Nazma Kabir, and Cristina Fuentes, International Director of Hay Festivals, who will talk about our work with Plan in Colombia.  Chaired by Claire Cohen, Deputy Women's Editor for Telegraph Wonder Women.

John Vaillant (USA/Canada) won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction for Fire Weather, a book about the terrible forest fire that burned Fort McMurray, the centre of the Canadian oil industry. In this brilliant work, Vaillant argues that it was not just a fire, but a warning that we need to prepare for an ever hotter and more inflammable world. In conversation with Cristina Fuentes La Roche.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Otras historias del Archivo de Indias, an anthology to be published by Anagrama, brings together texts by ten renowned Ibero-American authors, who will craft works of fiction based on documents preserved at the General Archive of the Indies. This project aims to bring the archive’s vast documentary holdings closer to a general audience, recovering some of the many stories recorded there through a diversity of voices. To learn more about this anthology, obe of the writers participating in this publication, Juan Bonilla, and the book's editor, Erna von der Walde will talk to Cristina Fuentes La Roche, international director of the Hay Festival.

Event in Spanish

Free admission for students