Online Events

Ai Weiwei, one of China's most internationally renowned artists, both for his creative activity and his political activism, will come to the Hay Festival in a streamed event. His memoirs, entitled 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, explore themes that touch on the very core of the Hay as a Festival of creation and thought: freedom of expression and activism, cultural and political history, as well as his creative life. His is a career that has not been limited to the visual arts, but encompasses other fields such as architecture (he participated in the design of Beijing’s National Stadium), music and film. In the book, the artist recounts his life in the United States from 1983 till 1993, and his rise to the status of superstar in the world of art.

Ai Weiwei will be in conversation with Anne McElvoy, British journalist and executive editor at The Economist, who has previously served as policy editor and head of audio. The Economist Ask, the bi-weekly Thursday programme/podcast conducted by McElvoy, has brought together hundreds of leading newsmakers from around the world.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

While the debate rages on about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) making music into something uniform and trivial, there is a sudden proliferation of initiatives that show how technology can, in fact, help expand this form of expression’s creative boundaries.

Barcelona's Sónar + D festival has become a global forum for debate on how music and new technologies intersect. Ricard Robles, founder and co-director of Sónar, will explore the topic along with the future of macro-festivals with Miquel Molina, deputy editor of La Vanguardia and writer.

Event in Spanish

Jon Fosse's theater has not yet been represented in Spain in an open way. With this presentation, Editorial De Conatus wants to show the power of this author who has written more than 30 plays. All the innovation of Fosse's style is felt above all in the dialogues. Fosse has said many times that he writes music and that is how it can be felt in the reading aloud that a great actress like Marta Nieto can interpret. Silence and expressiveness, poignancy and depth. In addition to the 2023 Nobel Prize, Fosse was a finalist for the International Booker Prize 2022, National Book Award 2022, Circle Award, as well as Book of the Year in The New Yorker. Among his books, Trilogy and Septology stand out: The Other Name (I and II); I is another and A new name.

The event will be presented by Silvia Bardelás, editor of Editorial De Conatus

Event in Spanish

Culture is renowned for building bridges. That it transforms borders into meeting points and overcomes language, racial and political barriers is an experience shared and understood by those who make their home in the creative arts. Building cultural bridges between Barcelona and Madrid is the subject of the conversation to be held at the Hay Festival by Sonia Mulero, Director General of the Banco de Sabadell Foundation, and Evelio Acevedo, Managing Director of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation and Daniel Fernández, head of publishing labels such as Edhasa and Castalia and, since last December, president of the publishers of Spain.

They will talk with Miquel Molina, writer and journalist, and assistant editor of La Vanguardia.

He said in an interview that Roberto Bolaño changed his life as a reader and as a writer. Senegalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr won the prestigious Goncourt Prize in 2021 with his novel La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (The Most Secret Memory of Men), the title referencing Bolaño's famous book Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives). The work is inspired by the life of the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, critic of colonialism, and the great tragedies of the 20th century, and is based on the relationship between the West and the African continent. He received prizes for titles such as La Cale, Terre ceinte and Silence du choeur before winning the most prestigious prize in French literature.

He will talk with Jacinta Cremades, literary critic and author of the novel Regreso a París.

The event will be presented by Isabelle Berneron, attachée for books, ideas and media networks at the Institut Français D'Espagne.

Event in French, with simultaneous translation into Spanish

There will be a book-signing at the bookstands in front of the IE University

Many of the women who have made their mark in centuries past did so in spite of the conventions of the time and thanks to intelligence, ambition and passion combined in equal measure into a force that sometimes destroyed them. Writer Reyes Monforte tells one such story in depth in La condesa maldita, the real-life Countess Maria Tarnowska, descendant of the Scottish queen Mary Stuart, member of one of the most important Russian aristocratic families of the court of the tsars and closely connected to the Romanovs. Overnight, she became the first femme fatale of the belle époque and the focus of the 20th century’s first true crime story. She was accused of instigating the murder of her soon-to-be husband, with the help of two of her lovers: Moscow's most famous lawyer, and the Russian translator of Charles Baudelaire’s work. It was the scandal that shocked the whole of Europe at the beginning of the 20th century.

Monforte will discuss the novel with Carlos Aganzo, author of some twenty books of poetry and as many travel books. Formerly editor of Diario de Ávila and El Norte de Castilla, he is currently director of the Vocento Foundation.

There will be a book signing at the end of the event

Event in Spanish

Historian, television presenter, fiction writer and essayist, Simon Sebag Montefiore was present for the last days of the Soviet Union and travelled around the region during the 1990s. He has written on Russia for The Sunday Times, The New York Times and The Spectator, among other magazines and newspapers. A number of his book, including Stalin>: The Court of the Red Tsar, Titans of History and Jerusalem: The Biography have been translated into Spanish. The last book published in Spain by this writer, a descendent of a distinguished family of Sephardic Jews that had branches all over Europe, has been Written in History, a compilation of important letters written about politics, culture and art by great figures who have influenced our past.

Sebag Montefiore will talk to the British journalist Martin Ivens, Editor of The Times Literary Supplement.

Once the event has finished, the author will sign books in the booth outside IE University.

With simultaneous translation from English into Spanish

The journalist Inés Martín Rodrigo made her name with her second novel, Las formas del querer, winning the prestigious Nadal Prize. Since then, she been talking about dancing a great deal. She says that writing the book was therapeutic, and let her understand herself better. Her first work of fiction was Azules son las horas, about Sofía Casanova, the first Spanish war correspondent; she has also published a compilation of interviews called Una habitación compartida.

Martín Rodrigo will talk to Jesús Vigorra, director and presenter of Canal Sur Radio’s La mañana de Andalucía.

Event in Spanish

Book signing at the stand on Calle Real

Drawing on colonial discourse and postcolonial theory to reinterpret key writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, Myroslav Shkandrij discusses how the need to legitimize expansion gave rise to ideas of Russian political and cultural hegemony and influenced Russian attitudes towards Ukraine. These notions were then challenged and subverted in a counter-discourse that shaped Ukrainian literature.

Both Russian and Ukrainian writers have explored the politics of identity in the post-Soviet period, but while the canon of Russian imperial thought is well known, the tradition of resistance – which in the Ukrainian case can be traced as far back as the meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian polities and cultures in the 17th century – is less familiar. Myroslav Shkandrij, a professor in the Department of German and Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba, is the author of Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times. Olena Haleta is a professor at the Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Lviv.

A bitter cocktail of high inflation, low growth, spiralling energy costs and war is fuelling fears that Europe may be returning to the hard times of the past. The 20´s? The 70´s? How can it rise to the challenge?

Event in English with simultaneous translation

Russia’s criminal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked an interest in the country as never before. Suddenly, Ukraine was everywhere, with media internationally regularly covering the war and political analysts offering insights. More recently, a plethora of books about Ukraine have appeared in the English-language world. In this panel, moderated by Charlotte Higgins, chief culture writer for The Guardian, authors will discuss their books about Ukraine: Adrian Karatnycky, of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter and the Atlantic Council examines Ukraine’s history and its political leaders in Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia; Sasha Dovzhyk, of INDEX, discusses Ukrainian novelist and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina, who died of injuries following a Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk in June 2023, and her book Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary, to be published in February 2025, Victoria Belim, Ukrainian memoirist who is notable for her 2023 book, The Rooster House; and Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, author of a revelatory eyewitness account of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and heroism of the Ukrainian people in their resistance.

Adrian Karatnycky and Yaroslav Trofimov will join the event digitally.

Currently Budapest has Europe’s largest and most ambitious urban cultural development, the Liget Budapest Project. An urban and cultural development plan that has transformed the Hungarian capital, involving internationally acknowledged architects, like Sou Fujimoto or Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). With five new buildings and half of the park area completed and three more to go, the project’s visionary, Laszlo Baan, also director of the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, will be at the Hay Festival to explain and elaborate on the project, and how it relates to comparable projects in Europe.

Isabel Fuentes, PhD in Museology of Natural and Human Sciences, has spent twenty years working in scientific communication and cultural management in institutions such as the Residencia de Estudiantes, the National Museum of Natural Sciences and the La Caixa Foundation. She is currently the director of CaixaForumand an expert in the transformation that a museum can bring about in the city inwhich it is installed.

Baan and Fuentes will talk with Miquel Molina, journalist and writer, assistant director of the newspaper La Vanguardia.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish and vice versa

Times of historical change affect the international hierarchy, creating new jobs and opportunities for rapid change. At such moments, younger people may enter the game on an equal footing with middle-aged and older people. But is the world ready for the changes proposed by the youth? Can their voices really be heard during global conflicts and wars?

Vasylisa Stepanenko is an Associated Press video journalist, and producer of the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol. She earned the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, one of the youngest winners in the world. Anna Novosad is a former Minister of Education of Ukraine and CEO of the charity SavEd, which aims to increase access to education in Ukraine following the consequences of Russian aggression. Yaryna Chornohuz is the author of the collection How the military circle bends. Hosted by Tetiana Troshchynska.

Anna Novosad and Vasylisa Stepanenko will join the event digitally.

Pedro Zuazua claims to be a better person since he started living with cats. In working hours director of communications at El País, the journalist attracted thousands of readers with his first book, under the provocative title En mi casa no entra un gato (No cat will come into my house). Now convinced that cats will dominate the world, he has published Días para ser gato (Days to be a cat). And not content with that, he has written an entertaining and touching show with the musician Pablo Moro. The show started its tour in Madrid and Oviedo, filling venues, and now comes to Hay Festival Segovia designed to fit perfectly into “vermouth time”. They encourage the public to propose a song to be included in the show. Send an e-mail to enmicasanoentraungato@gmail.com. Pablo Moro's discography includes works such as Emepetreses (MP3s), Smoking Point, Pequeños placeres domésticos (Small domestic pleasures) and La vida solucionada (Life, solved).

They will sign at the stands at Calle Real

Event in Spanish

Christina Lamb and Sofia Andrukhovych is a writer and translator, author of seven books of prose talk with Tetiana Troshchynska is executive director of PEN Ukraine.

The creative personalities of Jorge Volpi and Carlos Granés meet in the intersection of narrative and the essay. Volpi, who predominantly writes novels, has garnered awards for titles such as En busca de Klingsor, La tejedora de sombras and Una novela criminal (Alfaguara Prize 2018). He also writes short stories and essays, including El magisterio de Jorge Cuesta, which won him the Premio Plural prize, and La guerra y las palabras. Partes de guerra is his most recent novel. Carlos Granés, social anthropologist, fuses the discipline with art and literature. His titles include La revancha de la imaginación and Delirio Americano, a book where he analyses the many cultural, political and ideological currents that have contributed to the invention of modern Latin America. He is a regular contributor to the magazine Letras Libres. His work El puño invisible won the Isabel Polanco International Essay Prize. The two writers will talk about the idea of their works as communicating vessels at the Hay Festival.

Event in Spanish

There will be a book-signing at the bookstand on Calle Real.

When reality is so intense that words lose their meaning, poetry can best describe the feeling.

The best Ukrainian and foreign poets will share poems about freedom, love, and hope at special readings in national languages ​​and English. With Halyna Kruk, Julia Musakovska, Yaryna Chornohus, Hanan Issa, Ostap Slyvynsky, Hinemoana Baker, Gad Kaynar Kissinger and Jan Wagner.

Hinemoana Baker, Hanan Issa, Gad Kaynar Kissinger and Jan Wagner will join the event digitally.

In Falling Is Like Flying the Dutch writer Manon Uphoff recreates a childhood of terror, marked by a tyrannical and abusive father one who, at the same time, had a perverse charm. The death of her older sister was the trigger for Uphoff to begin writing, not a typical autobiographical chronicle, but creating a symbolic and poetic universe that connects the traumas of her past with Greek mythology, fairy tales and science. The work was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize and also won the Charlotte Köhler Award. Previously, Uphoff has published Begeerte, a collection of short stories, and the novel Gemis, also shortlisted for the Libris Prize.

She will talk to the journalist Irene Hernández Velasco, who has been a correspondent in various countries and currently works for El Mundo newspaper.

Once the event has finished, the author will sign books in the booth outside IE University.

With simultaneous translation from English into Spanish

For the Ukrainian people, Radio Liberty has offered an opportunity to receive uncensored information about events in the world and in Russia, including the work of dissidents.

The station's journalists Vitaly Portnikov and Halyna Tereshchuk discuss the impact of broadcasting in the current crisis. With Iaroslav Hrytsak.