Hay Festival Segovia is back! Books, art, film, politics, robotics... More than 100 guests from 17 countries will gather together from 15th to 18th September 2022, once again turning this medieval Castilian city into the world capital of discussion and ideas.
The British Council is supporting this new edition of one of Spain’s leading art and literature festivals with an event bringing together the writers Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Hanan Issa and Xita Rubert which poses the question of how do new generations experience their relationship to identity, history, love or the concept of revolution.
Yara Rodrigues Fowler is one of the most emblematic up-and-coming British writers on the current literary scene. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for her debut, "Stubborn Archivist". Rodrigues Fowler's new novel, "There are more things", revolves around the political awakening of Melissa and Catarina, two London flatmates with roots in Brazil.
Hanan Issa is a writer, poet, and artist from Wales. Her debut pamphlet "My Body Can House Two Hearts" was published by Burning Eye Books in 2019. Her work has been performed and published in a variety of places including BBC Wales, ITV Wales, Huffington Post, StAnza festival and Poetry Wales. Issa has been named the fifth National Poet of Wales, making her the first Muslim to hold the title.
For her part, Xita Rubert has won over readers and critics with a fascinating debut, "My Days with the Kopps", in which she wonders whether growing up is to enter a fiction of no-return. Rubert graduated in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Warwick and is currently working on a PhD in Comparative Literature, on a scholarship from Princeton University where she teaches on the relationship between philosophy, literature and medicine.
They will be in conversation with Ludovic Assémat, Head of Arts at the British Council in Spain on Friday 16th September at 11.30h (more information here).
On a different note, music will once again form part of the festival programme with a concert given by the British Council School Ensemble conducted by Rafael Villanueva. Made up of teachers, students and alumni from the school, the Ensemble will offer a repertoire ranging from baroque and classical gems to much-loved popular tunes (Sunday 18th September at 13.45h: more information here).
Other UK guests participating in this year's edition include the Russian-British scientist Sir Konstantin Novoselov, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for his discovery of graphene; Sir Antony Beevor, the renowned World War II novelist and historian; the researcher Richard Firth-Godbeher, considered one of the world's leading specialists in the field of emotions; historian, television host, novelist and essayist Simon Sebag Montefiore; and renowned multimedia conceptual artist Kate Daudy, among others.