Hay Festival brings readers and writers together to share stories and ideas in sustainable events around the world. Founded in 1987, it has run editions in more than 30 locations worldwide through the years. We were delighted to hear from Cristina Fuentes La Roche, International Director of Hay Festival, about the authors she’s most looking forward to at this year’s Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias.
I am very much looking forward to Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias that takes place between the 25th and 28th January 2024. We are going to celebrate the best of literature and ideas exploring south to south conversations, ways to reconnect to nature and re-think the challenges we face as societies; we will discuss equalities and how to take care of the environment and our democracies. All this in the beautiful and complex Caribbean city of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia.
I have been asked to choose five great women I am looking forward to listening to during the festival and here they are:
The US thinker Rebecca Solnit, author of over 20 books that cover matters such as feminism, the indigenous peoples of the United States, insurrection movements, natural disasters, and people power. Her most recent title, Whose Story Is This?, seeks to question hegemonic Western narratives, analysing the pressure of those who concentrate privileges by keeping racialized people and women on the fringes.
Tsitsi Dangarembga, her work offers debate on and insight into education, politics, activism and feminism, especially focusing on her own country, Zimbabwe.
The Brazilian award-winning journalist, writer and documentary-maker, Eliane Brum who lives and works in Altamira, in the Amazon rainforest and is the author of The Amazon as the Centre of the World, 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. She writes about the negligence and corruption that is changing the face of the Amazon.
Mariana Mazzucato, a professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is best known for her work on dynamics of technological change, the role of the public sector in innovation, and the concept of value in economics.
.jpg)
Spanish writer Irene Solá, who in her new book portrays a world full of witchcraft, ghosts, beasts and demons, and a group of women around the deathbed of the most contemporary of them, together, they reconstruct over three hundred years of history.
This is just a small selection of conversations and ideas from a festival that brings together in its XIX edition almost 200 writers from all over the world to analyse the past and explore the present to enable us to imagine the future. They will talk with fellow Colombian writers creating unique and site specific conversations but for all of us to enjoy and participate in, in person and digitally.
- Cristina Fuentes La Roche, International Director, Hay Festival
About Cristina
Cristina Fuentes La Roche is International Director of Hay Festival. Since 2005, Fuentes La Roche has led Hay Festival’s global development strategy, managing annual festival editions in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, the USA, and Spain, and global education and outreach series Hay Joven, Hay Communitario and Hay Festivalito, and digital platforms Imagina el Mundo and the Spanish Hay Festival podcast. She was awarded an honorary OBE in 2019 for services to promoting British culture and values to the Spanish-speaking world. She graduated from Business and Administration at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid before earning MAs in Arts Management (Birkbeck College) and European Literature and Theatre Studies (UNED).
Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias is taking place from the 25th-28th January. You can find out more on the Hay Festival website.
Header image: Eliane Brum, Creedit Lela Beltrão
