Hay Festival Colombia Digital

Victoria Amelina was a novelist, essayist and poet, and a friend of the festival, who died following a Russian missile attack in June 2023. After the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Amelina trained as a war crimes researcher, travelling to areas liberated from Russian occupation and listening to and recording the testimonies of witnesses and survivors.

In memory of Amelina, PEN Ukraine’s executive director Tetyana Teren, program director of Lviv BookForum Sofia Cheliak and human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk talk to journalist Christina Lamb about Ukrainian women’s fight for justice. They share their future vision of the country, how victory for Ukraine will not happen without just punishment for war criminals, and why women need to be at the centre of it all.

Oleksandra Matviichuk will join remotely

Journalist and writer Ed Vulliamy, poet Pavlo Vyshebaba, writer, translator and artist Kateryna Mikhalitsyna and television presenter Catalina Gómez Ángel discuss what it is that makes people save rather than run away, and where the breaking point is in times of conflict. They also speak about psychological resilience versus breakdown in the face of the trauma of the war. Chaired by David Rieff.

Closed captions are available for this event in English and Spanish. Click on the "cc" icon in the video frame to select.

Joselo Rangel is a founder member, guitarist and song-writer with one of the great bands of Mexican rock, Café Tacvba. He has also had a respected literary career, with the publication of the book of essays Crócknicas marcianas, followed by the book of short stories One hit wonder (2015), the novel Los desesperados (2018) and his most recent book, La niña aburrida (2021). He will talk about the links between music and literature, his literary work, and the book he is writing now, with Mariana H.

Presentation of the book by Volodymyr Vakulenko-K. I'm turning..., which included the occupation diary the writer kept in February-March 2022 and his selected poems. The book will be published by Vivat publishing house.

Diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko-K. – painful and truthful records that contained his thoughts and observations from the beginning of the full-scale invasion and during the occupation of Izyum and his native village of Kapitolivka in the Kharkiv region. Until the abduction by the Rashists, the inevitability of which he was aware, as well as the fact that he had little chance of survival - because he is Ukrainian because he is a volunteer, and activist because he has dignity. The day before the abduction, Volodymyr buried the diary under a cherry tree in his yard, telling his father: "When ours come, give it to them." What is it like to live under occupation? What do people become? What opens before the eyes and in the heart?

Rosa Beltrán (Mexico) is an acclaimed novelist, short story writer, essayist, translator and Doctor of Comparative Literature. She has been a professor in Mexico, the United States, Spain and Israel. She is the author of six novels, the most recent of which is Radicales libres (2021), a novel in which the author examines the life of Rosa Beltrán, and explores over six decades of Mexican history through the experiences of women from three different generations. In conversation with Liliet Heredero.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia on the territory of Ukraine, the whole world laughed at the memes and jokes that Ukrainians generated about any situation in leading shows. The ability to laugh while being in the epicenter of tragedy was fascinating.

Does laughter really help you get over trauma, what comedians can joke about, and who can joke about a traumatic experience?

Armando Ianucci and David Schneider will join remotely

Is the human brain still evolving? Are the new technologies affecting it? The Argentinean neurologist Facundo Manes studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires and is a Doctor of Science from the University of Cambridge. He has published various books and produced television programmes such as Los enigmas del cerebro and Cerebro argentino, together with the Literature graduate Mateo Niro. His latest book, written with Niro, is called El cerebro del futuro: ¿Cambiará la vida moderna nuestra esencia?, and it tackles themes such as interdisciplinary work, the impact of the new technologies on the brain, neuroethics, how to treat mental illnesses and the role of science when dealing with social problems. He will talk to the BBC journalist Carlos Serrano.

Juan Villoro is one of the most multi-talented, high-profile and prolific writers on the contemporary Spanish-language literary scene. He has won many awards, including the José Donoso Prize in Chile, Spain’s Herralde Prize, Cuba’s Arguedas Prize, the Villaurrutia Prize in Mexico and the Argentinean ACE Award. He has lectured at UNAM, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. His body of work includes plays, articles, literary non-fiction and children’s books, as well as major novels such as El testigo and Llamadas de Ámsterdam, and the book of short stories The Guilty. His most recent novel is entitled La tierra de la gran promesa, and it tells the story of Diego González, a documentary writer who moves to Barcelona to film his latest work, his first ever non-political production. His plans change with a journalist starts to get him involved in an unsolved case of a drugs boss who has featured in one of his documentaries. The protagonist, immersed in politics once again, returns to Mexico to clear up the situation, as well as his own past.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Vladek’s story of survival – told through the diminutive where the Nazis are cats and the Jews are mice – is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his ageing father.

First published in a collected volume in 1986, the comics changed the way graphic novels were seen, showing audiences and critics that the form could be used to explore complex aesthetic, moral, and cultural themes. When Spiegelman published the book’s second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, the two-volume work was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize; it remains the only graphic novel to have ever won a Pulitzer.

Spiegelman (he will join remotely) will be in conversation with writer, curator of art projects and literary scholar Oleksandr Mykhed about his life and work.

Closed captions are available for this event in English and Spanish. Click on the "cc" icon in the video frame to select.

Ellipsis is a Hay Festival and British Council project that brings together young editors and writers from all over Mexico to take part in a series of writing and editing courses and, over the course of a year, publish an anthology of short stories. Two generations of young people have had the Ellipsis experience as part of the Hay Festival Queretaro, the first with twelve participants in 2018 and the second with 20 in 2019. Ana Laura Bravo (writer, 2019), Andrea Capetillo (writer, 2019) and Julio Villanueva (editor, 2018) will talk to the Arts Director of the British Council Mexico, Pamela Zúñiga.

Learn more about the Ellipsis experience here

Eliane Brum is a Brazilian journalist, writer and documentary maker. She was educated at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Rio Grande do Sul and has won over 40 Brazilian and international reporting awards. She participated in the compilation of special reports on Doctors Without Borders, ¡Dignidad!, which also featured authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa. She is the co-director of two documentaries: Uma historia severina and Gretchen: filme estrada. She is the author of La Amazonia: viaje al centro del mundo (2024), a book that narrates her move from Sao Paulo to Altamira, a city where the construction of one of the world’s largest (and most ecologically devastating) dams is taking place. Brum will speak to Adriana Villegas.

Simultaneous translation from Portuguese to Spanish available

Perhaps the issue of greatest urgency today is the terrible impact that human activity is having on the planet Earth, threatening thousands of species and ecosystems with extinction, and even putting the viability of our own species at risk. Books such as The Sixth Extinction are of great importance for teaching us about this situation. This international bestseller by the journalist Elizabeth Kolbert (United States) won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2015. In this work the author looks at how human activity has disturbed the balance of nature, to the point that it is the greatest threat to the planet’s biodiversity and on the point of causing the world’s next mass extinction. Kolbert has written regularly for The New Yorker since 1999, specializing in scientific subjects, and in her most recent book, Under a White Sky (2021), she asks what can be done to stop and repair the damage being caused by humans, looking particularly at the work of biologists, engineers and researchers who work tirelessly for the conservation and restoration of nature. In conversation with Carla Santana Torres.

At a time so polarized as the present, where the public conversation looks more like a competition to see who can impose their view most stridently, dialogue and the ability to listen and to see the world from others’ points of view have become more important than ever as a way to understand each other. So, as a festival of conversations, we are committed to the power of dialogue to build agreement and redefine our present and our future. As part of this spirit, this event brings together the Mixe linguist, writer and activist Yásnaya Elena Aguilar; the actor, director and activist Diego Luna; and the writer and journalist Antonio Ortuño; in conversation with the El País journalist, Javier Lafuente, to exchange points of view on how we can talk about Mexico.

As a Bolton teenager with a paper round, Clive Myrie read all the newspapers he delivered from cover to cover and dreamed of becoming a journalist. Now with a long standing career in reporting, the BBC news anchor, award-winning presenter and host of Mastermind tells how his family history has influenced his view of the world. He introduces his Windrush generation parents, a great grandfather who helped build the Panama Canal, and a great uncle who became a prominent detective in Jamaica. He reflects on how being Black has affected his perspective on issues he’s encountered in thirty years reporting on some of the biggest stories of our time.

The effects of the pandemic have been terrible in terms of its consequences on the health and economies of so many, and artistic creation has not been exempt from great difficulties and transformations. Although a lockdown might seem to create the conditions necessary for making art, many writers have talked about their incapacity to do so, among other reasons, because the strange idea that reality might be wilder than fiction had come to pass. Three Latin American writers talk about their personal experiences in the strangest year in recent history. Pilar Quintana (Colombia), Carmen Rioja (Mexico) and Santiago Roncagliolo (Peru), will talk about literature and the pandemic with Imanol Martínez.

Perhaps the issue of greatest urgency today is the terrible impact that human activity is having on the planet Earth, threatening thousands of species and ecosystems with extinction, and even putting the viability of our own species at risk. Books such as The Sixth Extinction are of great importance for teaching us about this situation. This international bestseller by the journalist Elizabeth Kolbert (United States) won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2015. In this work the author looks at how human activity has disturbed the balance of nature, to the point that it is the greatest threat to the planet’s biodiversity and on the point of causing the world’s next mass extinction. Kolbert has written regularly for The New Yorker since 1999, specializing in scientific subjects, and in her most recent book, Under a White Sky (2021), she asks what can be done to stop and repair the damage being caused by humans, looking particularly at the work of biologists, engineers and researchers who work tirelessly for the conservation and restoration of nature. In conversation with Carla Santana Torres.

Gloriously Gothic and unnervingly contemporary, Jeanette Winterson’s Night Side of the River is a blend of chilling short stories and the author’s real-life encounters with the supernatural. Winterson explores grief, revenge and the myriad ways in which technology can disrupt the boundary between life and death. Our lives are digital, exposed and always on. We can find out everything about our world, but we know little about the world of ghosts. They wander the metaverse just as they haunt our homes and our memories, seeking new ways to connect, to live among us, to remind us, to tempt us, to take their revenge. These are the stories of the dead – of those we’ve lost, loved, forgotten…and feared.

La Delicia de Alicia play a vibrant, elegant, modern and experimental mixture of jazz with elements of pop genres such as funk, rock and hip hop, topped off with the addition of afrobeat, Latin jazz and Eastern rhythms. To bring a delightful end to the festival Saturday, we present the grooves of La Delicia de Alicia.

Settle in for a joyous morning of family entertainment with national treasure and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen. He shares stories and poems from his extensive back catalogue, and introduces his latest playful tale The Incredible Adventures of Gaston le Dog. Inspired by stories Michael used to tell his son on holiday in France, this was the book he dreamed of writing while he was recovering from Covid.