Hay Festival
Hay Festival..what do literature, visual arts, cinema, music, geopolitics, journalism and the environment have in common? Check out the Hay Festival to find out. Ten years in the running, the four-day Hay Festival seeks to foster the local and international promotion of literature, debate, cultural exchange, education and development.
The Hay Festival is a remarkable literary and art event originally from Hay-on-Wye, a small market town in Wales, where “shoes and strawberries used to be traded but now Dicken´s complete works are for sale; and cheese and meat displays now feature Stevenson and Joyce” -explains journalist Juan Esteban Constaín. this is why Hay-on-Wye is often described as “the Town of Books”.
The Hay Festival Foundation has been gathering readers and writers together worldwide for 30 years to share inspiring and fascinating stories and ideas. In 2007, Colombia joined a number of countries hosting the event, chosing Cartagena de Indias as its venue. Ever since, it has summoned outstanding cultural representatives from Latin America and the world at large, welcoming visitors by the thousands while inviting them to rejoice in the exchange of thought and literature.
In the last week of January, come and enjoy several of the approximately one hundred displays and presentations by the top international professionals in their respective fields. In years past, the festival has seen attendance from an absolutely glittering list of writers, philosophers, filmmakers, photographers, chefs and musicians, including such personalities as Nobel laureats Mario Vargas Llosa, the German-Romanian author, Herta Müller and the British booker prize winner, Julian Barnes.
Intent on promoting appreciation of the arts amongst youth, the festival has specific events for young people and in fact, twenty percent of the tickets are available at no cost to students with valid ID.
