Hay Festival Cartagena 2025

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 are asking ourselves more and more whether we are progressing towards equality of gender, race and class; we tackle this matter based on the following questions: How can we fight structural racism? How is it possible to guarantee that artificial intelligence does not increase existing inequalities? What can the city learn from the countryside, and vice versa? With Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua), Bocafloja (Mexico), Ochy Curiel (Dominican Republic) Colm Tóibín (Ireland) and Justin Torres (United States) in conversation with Ayisha Osori.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Two writers talk about their recent work with Elisa Guerra. In her latest book, El miedo, María Hesse considers her own fears: those that have accompanied her throughout her life and the same ones that she shares with so many other women. Through a highly visual and allegorical language, her pages bring to life anxiety, manipulation, precariousness, change, loneliness, madness, maternity, aging and death. The Cartagena writer, Cindy Herrera, is an audiovisual media producer who, having studied Linguistics and Literature and a Master’s in Creative Writing, is in the final stages of her doctorate in Latin American literature. She is the author of the short story book El manifiesto del espejo and the book of hybrid narratives Des-entierro. This book is a form of resigned fascination with death as an episode, a long moment to be reflected on.

This year we celebrate 20 years in Colombia: two decades of conversations, debates, questions, music, film, photography and books. Through the voices of some of the festival’s most iconic guests, as well as those who make this great festival of ideas possible, we mark the date and wish a long life to the Hay Festival in Colombia through this special documentary.

Duration: 1 hour, 23 minutes

Direction: Gustavo Gordillo

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. Festival guests will bring a wide ranging focus to the conversation, including perspectives from both the global south and the north, and based on the following questions: How can economic degrowth be made an attractive alternative? How would the legalisation of drugs affect the world economy? What can the city learn from the countryside, and vice versa? With Anne Applebaum (United States), Nataliya Gumenyuk (Ukraine) and Jorge Ramos (Mexico / United States). They will talk to Clara Elvira Ospina.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.

Peter Frankopan (Croatia / United Kingdom) is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he directs the Centre for Byzantine Research, and is a Senior Researcher at Worcester College. He is also UNESCO Professor of Silk Roads Studies and a bye-fellow at King's College, Cambridge. Called a “literary star” by The Times and a “rock star don” by the BBC, his work has been acclaimed internationally, particularly his book The Silk Roads. His latest work, The Earth Transformed. An Untold Story, has been praised for its wide-ranging and erudite analysis of how the environment has moulded global history. In conversation with Andrea Bernal.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.

We talk about equalities and the social, legal and cultural mechanisms that can be used in order to achieve a genuine equality. With Paula Moreno Zapata (Colombia), an industrial engineer, founder and president of the Manos Visibles organisation and boardmember of the Ford Foundation. In conversation with Gilbert Shang Ndi.

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.

Colson Whitehead (United States) is a writer who has been recognised with the prestigious MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, and who has taught at various universities. His first novel, The Intuitionist, was a PEN / Hemingway Award winner, and also won the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award. With John Henry Days he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Young Lions Fiction Award. His novels The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railway won, among other awards, the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is Crook Manifesto. In conversation with Jorge Ramos.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.

Susan Neiman (United States) is an outstanding philosopher and writer known for her contributions in the fields of moral philosophy, the Enlightenment, metaphysics and politics. Educated at Harvard, Neiman has taught at Yale and the University of Tel Aviv, and, since 2000 has directed the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. Her new book, Left Is Not Woke, is a critical examination of the distinction between the principles of the left and the phenomenon sometimes known as woke, arguing that the true spirit of the left is based on universalism, justice and the possibility of progress, values that she considers have been distorted by some contemporary currents which prioritise tribal identities, tending towards conservatism. In conversation with Laura Quintana.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.

The writer and historian Anne Applebaum (United States), winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction for Gulag. A History and author of Twilight of Democracy. The seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, goes into greater depth in this direction with Autocracy Inc. The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, a book that won the German Booksellers’ Peace Prize. As well as offering a study of the methods of modern autocrats, Applebaum uncovers an intricate network that links totalitarian regimes to the financial world, security services that are dedicated to espionage, and talented propagandists. In conversation with José Manuel Acevedo.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.

Melba Escobar talks to Colombian artists who are also cultural actors and managers. With Juan Diego Mejía, a writer who is very tuned into our times and a noted cultural manager: he founded and ran the Medellin University channel, Canal U, and directed Cultura Ciudadana and the Medellin Book and Culture Festival his most recent book is Y si acaso yo muero en la guerra. José Zuleta Ortiz directed the Libertad Bajo Palabra initiative (running writing workshops for convicts in Colombian prisons) for 15 years, and won the National Literature Prize for a novel published by the Ministry of Culture in 2022 with Lo que no fue dicho. His latest novel, Una versión de los hechos, tells the story of friendship among three characters.

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.

Edward Chancellor (United Kingdom) is a financial historian, journalist and investment strategist. His articles have been published in outlets including the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Here he presents The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest, which tells the story of the economy up to our own times. This work of non-fiction, winner of the Hayek Award for best book of 2023, is inspired by the conviction that the artificial reduction of interest rates has created many of our current problems, including the rise of populism. In conversation with Mónica Jaramillo.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 January and 2 February.

This event forms part of the Literary Pairs series run by Hay Festival and the British Council; as part of the initiative, each pair will repeat their conversation at the 2025 Hay-on-Wye Festival (Wales, United Kingdom). With Johny Pitts (United Kingdom), television presented, writer and photographer, as well as a curator of the electronic magazine Afropean.com, a successful mouthpiece of the Afro-European diaspora and now a book, Afropean: Notes From Black Europe. He will talk to Óscar Guardiola-Rivera (Colombia), a writer, philosopher, lecturer in Law and Human Rights at Birkbeck (University of London), and author of Si Latinoamérica gobernase el mundo, in which Guardiola reflects on the development of European capitalism, built based on flows of money from Mexico and the Andean silver mine of Potosi, looking in depth at the recent history of the development economies of Latin American and the Caribbean. His most recent book is Futuros pasados. In conversation with Camila Osorio.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.