For 15 years, José Zuleta Ortiz ran the Libertad Bajo Palabra programme, a series of writing workshops for convicts in Colombian prisons. He won the National Literature Prize for a novel published by the Ministry of Culture in 2022 for Lo que no fue dicho. His new novel, Una versión de los hechos, tells the story of a friendship among three characters: a prisoner from a women’s prison, a literature teacher, and a publisher who returns from exile in Spain. These intertwined lives form the narrative thread that leads to a reflection on complex and powerful ideas: political correction, justice within the law, art as a way to liberation, clandestinity and imprisonment, and versions of events that lie behind the official histories. In conversation with Juan Diego Mejía.