Hay Festival Cartagena 2025

Nikole Hannah-Jones (United States) is a journalist who specialises in racial justice, and who received the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project, a collaborative effort that has also published a book and made a documentary film exploring the history of slavery in the United States. She will speak to Claudia Mosquera Rosero-Labbé, researcher and Colombian Ambassador to Senegal, about the new movements for historical reparation which are arising all over the Americas, working to recover the silenced histories of racialized groups who have been left out of official history.

Three authors talk to Leonard Benardo about their writing, talking about the particular perspective of their work with respect to current social questions.Viet Thanh Nguyen (United States), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer; Colson Whitehead (United States), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Underground Railroad; and Javier Zamora (El Salvador / United States), author of Solito.

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

We celebrate two complementary spaces, the archive and the library, exploring experiences in different parts of the world: Polly Russell (United Kingdom) of the British Library, shares with us her experience of curating archives and exhibitions with a gender focus; and with Gustavo Ulcué Campo (Colombia), of the Nasa nation and expert in archives and heritage. In conversation with Adriana Martínez.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

At its book clubs, Hay Festival Cartagena offers intimate encounters with a selection of festival guests. These are spaces to talk in greater depth about recent work by some of the festival’s participants. At this event, Camila Sosa Villada (Argentina) will talk to Margarita Valencia about her book Tesis sobre una domesticación. The protagonist, a trans actress, finds she is trapped by marriage and social convention.

Those attending must have read the book

Yomi Adegoke is a British writer and journalist, author of The List, winner of the Groucho Maverick and Marie Claire Future Shapers awards, and included on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Johny Pitts (United Kingdom) is a television presenter, writer and photographer, as well as an editor at the electronic magazine Afropean.com, an essential guide for the Afro-European diaspora, and now a book: Afropean. Notes from Black Europe. In conversation with Mónica Moreno Figueroa.

Consecutive interpretation from English to Spanish available

The writer and journalist Leila Guerriero (Argentina) presents her book La llamada, 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.

Author of The Nutmeg’s Curse, a powerful work of history, essay, testimony and polemic, Amitav Ghosh (India) makes a powerful criticism of Western society through the book. Author of works of fiction and non-fiction translated into several languages, he has also received a range of awards and accolades, including five honorary doctorates; he was the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour. Ghosh has also been a panellist for the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland and the Venice Film Festival (2001). Smoke and Ashes: Opium hidden histories (Humo y cenizas: historias ocultas del opio), sobre el impacto del comercio del opio en la historia global y la de su propia familia. In 2024, the author published Smoke and Ashes: Opium hidden histories, on the impact of the opium trade throughout global history as well as his family's history. In conversation with Leonard Benardo.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

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. Author of The City of the Living, in which Lagioia explores guilt, responsibility and that fragile border that, we believe, keeps us safe from playing the role of executioners; he discovers echoes of his own youth and a human dimension of evil that is not easy to glimpse. In his latest book, Ferocity, he breaks down and defines our merciless contemporary world and weaves a plot that explores the ferocity latent in each individual, trapping the reader in a labyrinth of secrets and lies.. In conversation with Camila Osorio.

Simultaneous interpretation from Italian to Spanish available