At Hay Festival Arequipa. Image: Hay Festival International, Daniel Mordzinski

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

‘Peru and the Wider World’

Sales of tickets for the program open Friday (September 21) and will be available here.

As with much Hay programming, the festival, while frequently classified as a literary event, actually blends a great deal of current-affairs and popular-issue content into the mix. In this case, according to a prepared statement from Cristina Fuentes La Roche, international director of Hay series, “Hay Festival events investigate the world as it is and imagine the world of tomorrow.

“Our fourth edition in Arequipa celebrates and interrogates Peru, and the wider world, through diverse lenses of fiction, journalism, politics, art, food and even football.”

By category, here is the program’s quick rundown of highlights:

• Peruvian literature: Peru’s literary interests will include an appearance by Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who’s to speak Salman Rushdie on the power of fiction. Additionally, programming will present Santiago Roncagliolo, Enrique Planas, Katya Adaui, Renato Cisneros, Jeremías Gamboa, Oswaldo Chanove, Gustavo Rodríguez, Alonso Cueto, Teresa Ruiz Rosas and Karina Pacheco
• International literature: Britain’s Helen Fielding, Joanna Walsh, William Sieghart and Juliana Pachico will appear, as will Denmark’s Janne Teller; Spain’s Manuel Vilas; Sweden’s Karolina Ramqvist; Italy’s Antonella Lattanzi; French writers Pierre Ducrozet, Alice Zeniter and Philipe Claudel; as well as Canada’s Rosemary Sullivan and Métis writer Cherie Dimaline.
• Latin American literature: Alejandro Zambra of Chile and Colombians Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Azriel Bibliowicz and Silvana Paternostro are to be featured. In addtition, leading lights of the Hay Festival Bogotá39 selection of emerging Latin American writers scheduled to appear include Luciana Sousa (Argentina), Diego Zúñiga (Chile), Frank Báez (Dominican Republic), and Claudia Ulloa Donoso (Peru).
• Global Affairs programming is to include historian Andrea Wulf addresses “The Invention of Nature”; investigative reporter Luke Harding talks about “Collusion”; Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez talks about “Havana Real”; Alberto Vergara discusses “Citizens Without a Republic”; and a distinguished panel featuring Hugo Neira and Héctor Béjar looks at Velasco’s coup, 50 years on.
• Journalism: Today’s world and the challenges of covering it are explored by leading media figures including Peru’s César Hildebrandt, Rosana Cueva, Jacqueline Fowks, Patricia del Río, Rosa Maria Palacios and Gustavo Gorriti; the co-founder of Colombia’s Gabriel García Márquez Foundation for New Ibero-American Journalism, Jaime Abello; editor of Financial Times Latin America, John Paul Rathbone; founder of eldiario.es Ignacio Escolar; Britain’s Misha Glenny; Argentine writer Leila Guerriero; and Jesús Ruiz Mantilla of El País.
• Innovations in science and technology are explored in events with physicists Andrés Gomberoff (Chile), Roberto Emparan, Antonio Martinez Ron (Spain) and Christophe Galfard (France); botanist and author of The Plant Messiah Carlos Magdalena; and AI expert Omar Flórez (Peru).
• Peruvian cuisine is discussed and sampled in events with Central’s Virgilio Martinez, Nueva Palomino’s Mónica Huerta, La Revolución’s Karissa Becerra.
• Various arts are to be discussed in talks by Peruvian dramatist Mariana de Althaus and Switzerland’s Lukas Barfüss; British documentary maker Kate Horne; Peruvian dirtector Óscar Catacora; and Colombian artist Doris Salced. There’s to be music from pianist Marcela Roggeri and clarinettist Mariano Rey, and a series of pop-up photography exhibitions throughout the city.
• Football is to be reflected in appearances by former footballer Germán Leguía discussing his career, and writers are scheduled to talk about the effect the game has had on their careers in a session including José Carlos Yrigoyen, Renato Cisneros and Jeremías Gamboa.

Hay’s Wom@rts Partnership

At Hay Festival Arequipa. Image: Hay Festival International, Daniel Mordzinski

Hay Festival is one of 10 European cultural institutions participating in the global Wom@rts project, aiming to highlight the contribution of women to cultural heritage and diversity, and to tackle gender inequality by supporting their work globally.

Between 2018 and 2021 a series of festival events will be co-programmed with Wom@rts to interrogate these issues, including a series of talks at Hay Festival Querétaro.