Hay Festival Colombia Digital

Ernest Hemingway was one of the first writers to live in and write about a country at war, using his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background to For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). How has the role of writers and journalists changed during the current war and what choices did Ukrainian writers make after Russia initiated it in 2014 by annexing Crimea? American writer and photographer Michael Katakis manages Ernest Hemingway's literary estate. Victoria Amelina is a novelist and activist, a winner of the Joseph Conrad Literary Award. Jon Lee Anderson is an American biographer, war correspondent and staff writer for The New Yorker. Janine di Giovanni is the co-Founder and Director of The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies, a USAID-supported organization that documents and verifies war crimes and builds cases for international justice mechanisms. Chaired by Tetyana Oharkova, a Ukrainian literary scholar, journalist and essayist.

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The Tanzanian-British author, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, in conversation with the Ukrainian writer and decolonisation specialist.

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El etnólogo y antropólogo Martin von Hildebrand (Colombia) es una de las figuras clave en la lucha por los derechos territoriales de los pueblos originarios y la proyección de la selva amazónica. Ha sido merecedor de múltiples galardones, entre ellos el Right Livelihood Award, conocido como el Premio Nobel Alternativo. Su libro de memorias, El llamado del Jaguar es un retrato de su vínculo con la Amazonía. Relata su experiencia visitando la selva desde los años setenta, cuando fue testigo de los remanentes de las caucherías y las misiones evangelizadoras. El libro es un manifiesto de la importancia de esta extraordinaria reserva natural que abarca la mitad de nuestro país y que además alberga culturas milenarias que han quedado relegadas a los márgenes de la historia. En conversación con David Escobar.

Reportera y escritora, Alma Guillermoprieto inició su carrera en la Nicaragua de la lucha sandinista. Cubrió los conflictos en Centroamérica en los diarios The Washington Post y The Guardian, y ha escrito incansablemente desde entonces sobre América Latina para The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, la revista de National Geographic y ocasionalmente también para el diario El País. En 2008, y a instancias de Gabriel García Márquez, dictó la catedra Julio Cortázar en la Universidad de Guadalajara. Entre sus muchos premios destaca el premio Princesa de Asturias de Comunicación y Humanidades 2018, el MacArthur Fellowship y el premio de El País, Ortega y Gasset, para vida y obra. Como docente ha dictado cursos sobre América Latina en las universidades de Harvard, Chicago, Princeton y California-Berkeley, y sobre cubrimiento de ciencias en la Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá. En su última publicación, La vida toda (2022), Guillermoprieto recopila y edita trece crónicas y reportajes que retratan la vida social y política de los Estados Unidos. Una antología que sirve como radiografía de uno de los territorios más influyentes del mundo, visto desde dentro. Conversará con Juanita León.

Four experts on the classical world will talk to Toni Celia about the lessons we can take from that period, so far off in time, but so influential for Western culture, and whose echoes can still be heard in our legal systems, the philosophical tradition, and in the sciences and arts. Natalie Haynes (United Kingdom) is the author of A Thousand Ships, a reimagination of The Iliad from the viewpoints of its women characters, and Stone Blind; Charlotte Higgins (United Kingdom), Chief Culture Writer at The Guardian, is the author of Greek Myths. A New Retelling, about the influence of ancient Greece on our times; Pablo Montoya (Colombia) is the author of Marco Aurelio y los límites del imperio which portrays the last of the five “good emperors” of Rome; and with John Sellars (United Kingdom), philosopher and the author of books such as Lessons in Stoicism, Epicurus and the Art of Happiness and now Aristotle: Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Colm Tóibín (Ireland) is a novelist, journalist and educator, and is one of the most influential writers in contemporary literature. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards, including the E. M. Forster Award in 1995 and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Master (2004). His most recent work, Long Island (2024), the highly-awaited sequel to Brooklyn (2009), explores the life of Eilis Lacey two decades after her move to Long Island, dealing with the impact of the past on the present. He will talk to Charlotte Higgins.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

The writer and journalist Leila Guerriero (Argentina) presents her book La llamada: un retrato, a profile of the Argentine Silvia Labayru, a member of the armed group Montoneros and who in 1976 was kidnapped, tortured and raped at the Escuela de Mecánica la Armada clandestine detention centre, where thousands of people were held and murdered during the dictatorship. Labayru survived the experience, and was interviewed by Guerriero, beginning in 2021, while waiting for the outcome of the first trial for crimes of sexual violence committed against women who disappeared during the dictatorship, at which Labayru was a plaintiff. In conversation with Ana Cristina Restrepo.

Nicola Lagioia (Italy) won the Strega Award in 2014 for The City of the Living, translated into 15 languages. He contributes to all the major Italian cultural media, including La Stampa, La Reppublica, Il Venerdì and Internazionale, and is one of the presenters of Pagina3, a daily programme on Radio3. In The City of the Living, Lagioia examines guilt, responsibility and that fragile border which we believe keeps us safe from committing awful crimes; he discovers echoes in his own youth and a human dimension of evil that is painful to look at. In conversation with Camila Osorio.

Simultaneous interpretation from Italian to Spanish available

The journalist and writer Juan Gómez-Jurado (Spain) is one of the finest thriller writers in his language, and a bestselling author whose work has been translated into over forty languages. His Red Queen trilogy has been made into a Prime series, and is one of the most popular Spanish-language series of all time. Todo muere is the last part of his acclaimed Reina Roja series, and a long-awaited ending to one of the most read and loved contemporary sagas in the Spanish language. In conversation with Mónica Jaramillo.

Jennifer Ackerman (United Kingdom), the author of The Genius of Birds, returns with her new book, What an Owl Knows. The tales of the world are full of owls: for different cultures it has represented wisdom, mystery, or even presages of death. Popular culture also features the owl, which appears in the Harry Potter and Winnie the Pooh stories. These birds, which are able to turn their heads a full 180°, have a very special anatomy, but why are these creatures of the night so famous? This new book is a mixture of natural history treatise, a study of behaviour, and a look at the symbolism of these extraordinary animals. In conversation with Santiago Madriñán.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Salman Rushdie (India / United Kingdom / United States) is a major figure in contemporary literature and a very prolific author. His Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize in 1981, and was deemed the best of all winners on the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the prize’s creation. He has been the President of PEN America, a member of the UK’s Royal Society of Literature, is a French Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2023. On 12 August 2022, he suffered an attack that nearly killed him, 30 years after the proclamation of a fatwa following the publication of The Satanic Verses. The author relates these events, his recovery, and gives a powerful reflection on literature, art and freedom of expression in his most recent publication, Knife. He will talk about this and his most recent novel, Victory City, with Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

María Negroni (Argentina) is an Argentine writer and poet, with a doctorate in Latin American Literature from Columbia University in New York. His work covers various genres, including poetry, essay and fiction, and she has received important fellowships, including the Guggenheim and the Rockefeller. Her publications include the poetry book Islandia, which won an award from the PEN American Center, and the novels El sueño de Úrsula and La Anunciación. Her latest books are La idea natural (2024) and Utilidad de las estrellas (2024), which presents a fusion of austere and minimalist language with intense, expressionist images. She will talk about this book with Mario Jursich.

Richard Ford (United States), winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, 2016, published his most recent novel, Be Mine, this year. In the book he returns to the character of Frank Bascombe, and through him to the themes of happiness and denial, completing a social history of the baby boomer generation. Author of, among other novels, The Sportswriter, the bestselling Canada and the novel Independence Day, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN / Faulkner Fiction Award. His work has been translated into at least 28 languages, and he very recently won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. In conversation with the Colombian novelist Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

In 2025, the Hay Festival celebrates 20 years of conversations and thought in Colombia. To mark the anniversary, we have run a collaborative project in which Colombian society has helped us to put the twenty key questions for our time. We reflect on the importance of culture and literature, based on the questions: What value does fiction have for society? How can we render visible and learn from non-hegemonic narratives? What role does art play in the construction of a more peaceful, empathetic society that is aware of its challenges? With Piedad Bonnett (Colombia), Charlotte Higgins (United Kingdom), Nicola Lagioia (Italy) and Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico) in conversation with Pilar Reyes.

Interpretation from English to Spanish available

In 2025, the Hay Festival celebrates 20 years of conversations and thought in Colombia. To mark the anniversary, we have run a collaborative project in which Colombian society has helped us to put the twenty key questions for our time. In a context in which the environmental crisis and climate change have become urgent matters, festival guests urge us to reconsider our relationship with the planet based on the following questions: How can we change existing narratives to tackle the climate emergency? How can we make the exploitation of raw materials compatible with their climate impact? How can extensive farming be made compatible with protecting biodiversity in Colombia? Amitav Ghosh (India), writer and thinker; Peter Frankopan (United Kingdom), writer and historian; Virginia Mendoza (Spain), journalist, writer and anthropologist; Gustavo Ulcué Campo (Colombia), Nasa film and television producer. In conversation with Rosie Boycott.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available