Hybrid and free: this will be the Hay Festival edition in Colombia

Attendees at a talk at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2019.EFE

Decant, discuss and generate ideas around what has been lived in 2020, talk about literature and accompany each other in difficult times, that's what the Hay Festival in Colombia is betting on.

From next January 22 to 31 of the same month, the free hybrid edition of Hay de Cartagena, Jericó and Medellín will be held.

There will be more than 130 conversations, some of them face-to-face, in which 160 artists will participate.

"It has been a very difficult year, but we are beginning to see some hope, it seems that there are vaccines that work that we hope will soon be available and that global geopolitics can take a more supportive and unifying turn, given the results of the United States elections. ”, Said Cristina Fuentes La Roche, International Director of the Hay Festival.

"Without a doubt, this year has given us much to reassess and reprioritize and what better way to do it in the company of thinkers, writers, scientists and musicians."

From this group of writers, the Chilean writer Isabel Allende stands out, with whom the festival will open in a talk tribute to her career;

Emmanuel Carrère, who will talk about his new novel

;

Vanessa Springora, author of

, one of the most famous and controversial books in France during 2020;

the author of

, Marjane Satrapi;

Marieke Lucas, author of

at night, winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize;

and the Maltese, Joe Sacco.

"We will also have three of the mythical North American authors Paul Auster, Richard Ford and Paul Theroux," says Fuentes La Roche.

But they will also be unavoidable such as Leonardo Padura, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Rosa Montero, as well as Irene Vallejo;

Guadalupe Nettel, who will speak about motherhood, and Juan José Millás along with Juan Luis Arsuaga, who will present the four-handed book,

, on the origins of life.

For Colombia, the literary poster includes Tomás González, Melba Escobar, Margarita Posada, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Carolina Sanín, Gloria Susana Esquivel, Guissepe Caputo, Carolina Ponce de León, Jerónimo Atehortúa and Marta Orrantia.

With the group Las Tesis, from Chile, gender gaps will be addressed;

and with economists such as Thomas Piketty and the 2019 Nobel laureate in economics, Esther Duflo, among others, the challenges of the globalized world;

while conversations about music will be led by Rubén Blades, Jorge Drexler, Goyo, from ChocQuibTown, and Carlos Vives.