Hay Festival is the largest music and philosophy festival in the world. For this 36th edition taking place between 23 May and 2 June 2024, the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye brings together an exciting line-up of speakers including Bettany Hughes, Tim Spector, Tom Holland, Colm Tóibín and Jeanette Winterson, among others.
Within the programming, AC/E supports the participation of Spanish authors:
Sara Mesa
Spanish author considered one of the most interesting and promising voices of her generation. She achieved a great impact on critics thanks to her stories collected in the anthologies It is not easy to be green and La sobriedad del galápago. With the collection of poems This Goldfinch, she received the prestigious Miguel Hernández Poetry Prize, and with El trepanador de cerebros she made the leap to novels. Then came “Cuatro por cuatro”, (finalist for the Herralde Novel Prize in 2012), “An invisible fire”, “Cicatriz” (2015, Ojo Crítico Prize for Narrative), “Cara de pan” or “Un amor” (2020, considered the best novel of the year by El País, El Cultural and La Vanguardia) and “La familia” (2022, Cálamo Extraordinario Award, Andalusia Critics Award). She is also the author, together with the writer Pablo Martín Sánchez, of “Agatha” (La uÑa RoTa, 2017), where each of the authors writes their version of a story outlined by Herman Melville, from “Perrita Country” (Páginas de Espuma , 2021), and the essay “Administrative Silence” about bureaucratic cruelty. Her work recurrently explores abuses of power, conflictive daily relationships and the search for freedom, especially in the world of children and adolescents and has been translated into numerous languages.
Alana Portero
Writer, playwright and stage director from Madrid, trained as a medievalist at the Autonomous University of Madrid. In addition, she is co-founder of the theater company STRIGA and writes about culture, feminism and LGTBIQ + activism, especially that focused on trans women, for media such as Eldiario.es, El Salto Diario, Agente Provocador or Vogue. She also posts content on her own Patreon. “The Bad Custom” is the novel with which Portero debuts in 2023 as a novelist. Narrated in the first person, the work reflects the life journey of a teenager who is trapped in a body that she does not feel is hers. She is the recent winner of the 2023 Cálamo Prize
Munir Hachemi
She began selling her stories in fanzine format in the bars of Lavapiés together with the literary collective Los Escritores Bárbaros. After her first novels “Los pistoleros del eclipse”, and “废墟”, she published “Cosas vivas” in 2018 with Periférica Ediciones. In 2021 he was selected by Granta magazine as one of the "25 best narrators in Spanish." His collection of poems “The Remains” (La Bella Varsovia, 2022) earned him the 2022 El Ojo Crítico Poetry Prize. He is also a translator and currently works as a professor and researcher at Peking University.
The Hay Festival in Wales is a cultural and ideas festival for all audiences that celebrates the arts and sciences through inclusive, accessible and playful events. It sees more than 150 writers and intellectuals annually and features the participation of important writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, while giving voice to ideas that will help transform the world in fields ranging from science to technology. politics, passing through the arts, journalism and philosophy. A privileged space for exchange, dialogue and critical thinking.