José Zuleta Ortiz with Juan Diego Mejía

The other versions of the events

Jericó 2025, Sunday 26 January 2025

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.