Hay Festival Arequipa 2023

Two journalists at one of the world’s most important and prestigious media organisations will give this workshop for university students. Alejandro Millán and Juan Carlos Pérez, members of the BBC Mundo team, will explain the working model of the Spanish-language operations of this British news service which has been running for over a hundred years and is renowned for its news rigor and quality, talking about how it broadcasts its news and content in this digital era.

The Peruvian writer Gustavo Rodríguez presents Cien cuyes, winner of the prestigious Alfaguara Novel Prize in 2023. This is a story in which Gustavo Rodríguez brilliantly combines comedy and tragedy to examine one of our society’s most sensitive issues: aging and the physical and mental deterioration it brings. This he does through the eyes of Eufrasia, a protagonist who goes from one end of the city of Lima to the other in order to look after elderly people who depend on her care, and to whom they entrust certain tasks that only she is willing to carry out. In conversation with Patricia del Río.

Martín Ibarrola (Spain) will talk about his travel book, La selva herida, which was written after a journey on which he accompanied the Basque explorer Miguel Gutiérrez on an expedition through Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. During the journey, Ibarrola documented the many people who make up daily life in the Amazon region, from a biochemist who measures the pollution levels of rivers, to indigenous communities who fight against the lobbies, and even a group of miners whose dream is to form a band one day. The author will share with the audience these stories and will talk about the dangers facing the Madre de Dios rainforest. In conversation with Daniel Mitma.

The acclaimed author of the Trilogía de la casa de los conejos presents her latest novel, a moving story based on real events. For A través del bosque, Laura Alcoba (Argentina-France) investigated the infanticide committed in 1984 by an Argentinean woman exiled in France, taking us into the minds of the survivors of that tragedy more than 30 years afterwards. At this event, Alcoba will talk about the process of creating the novel and the ways in which literature can give meaning and closure to the incomprehensible. In conversation with Teresina Muñoz-Nájar.

Journalist, essayist and translator. Sabrina Duque won the Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Scholarship in 2018 and has been a finalist for the Gabriel García Márquez Prize for Journalism. In 2017 she published Lama (Turbina), a chronicle about the lives of the survivors of Bento Rodrigues and Paracatú de Baixo, towns in the interior of Brazil buried by toxic mud that overflowed from a mining waste dam. In 2019, she published VolcáNica (Debate), which covers both the volcanic nature of Nicaragua and its shocks, explosions and political flare-ups, regarding the protests of April 2018, which gave way to intense repression in the country. Her latest book, Necesito saber hoy de tu vida, a collection of profiles written in Portugal and Brazil, was published in 2023 by Anagrama. Excerpts from it have been translated into Portuguese, Italian and English. She has published in Etiqueta Negra, Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil), O Estado de S. Paulo (Brazil), Internazionale (Italy), The New York Times (USA), GK (Ecuador), El Malpensante (Colombia), Gatopardo (Mexico) and Brecha (Uruguay). She has lived in Portugal, Brazil, and Nicaragua, but currently resides in the United States.. In conversation with Jorge Jaime Valdez.