Hay Festival Jericó 2024

Selva Almada (Argentina), a journalist and writer, is one of the most respected authors in Latin American literature. Author of the non-fiction Chicas muertas (2014) and of the novels El viento que arrasa (2012), No es un río (2020) and Brickmakers (2021), her books have been translated into at least nine languages and, among other awards, she received the 2019 First Book Award given at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She has contributed to an anthology that the Hay Festival and Anagrama have published recently, one about how the Latin America collections reached the British Museum. She will talk about her recent work with Catalina González.

Irene Solà (Spain) is the author of the publishing phenomenon When I Sing, Mountains Dance (2019), written in Catalan and translated into over 20 languages, with 15 editions in circulation and winner of the 2019 Cálamo Prize and the 2020 European Prize for Fiction. In her new book, Et vaig donar ulls i vas mirar les tenebres, Solà portrays a world full of witchcraft, ghosts, beasts and demons, and a group of women gathered around the deathbed of the oldest of them. Together, they reconstruct over three hundred years of history. In conversation with Sara Jaramillo Klinkert.

Nona Fernández is a Chilean actor, writer and screenwriter. She contributed to an anthology, published by Hay Festival and Planeta in late 2023, about Latin American viewpoints on the Colombian truth report. She has been awarded with the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, given by the Guadalajara International Book Fair. She is the author of a number of books, including the novel Mapocho and the book of memoir, Voyager. She will talk about her most recent work with Perla Toro.

Jorge Franco is a Colombian writer, known for his novel Rosario Tijeras (1998), which was adapted for film and television. His book El cielo a tiros (2018) tells the story of a group of children of drug dealers, and deals with how the guilt of their fathers reaches down into the next generation. His most recent work, El vacío en el que flotas, was published in 2023. He will talk to Pilar Gutiérrez.

The lawyer Humberto de la Calle (Colombia) was a government minister during the César Gaviria presidency, Vice-president of the Republic, and Ambassador to Spain and then the United Kingdom in the late 1990s; in 2012 he was designated Head Negotiator of the government delegation during the peace process with the FARC. After the signing of the Final Agreement at the Colón Theatre, he was presidential candidate in 2018. Today he is a Senator in the Congress of Colombia. He has recently published a novel based on real events: La inverosímil muerte de Hércules Pretorius, about a young lawyer who has always been interested in the idea of a peaceful social revolution. The M-19 movement is growing in the convulsive Colombia of the 1970s, and this gives Hércules, and many others, an option and hope in terms of fighting for his ideals. In conversation with Octavio Escobar.