Hay Festival Arequipa: Iban Zaldua

Hay Festival Arequipa is one of the most important cultural and intellectual events in the Spanish-speaking world, taking place annually in the city of Arequipa, Peru. The cultural exchange and critical thinking by bringing together writers, scientists, artists, and thinkers from diverse disciplines for talks, workshops, concerts, and readings.

The festival´s tenth edition will be held from November 7 to 10, 2024, with 96 activities and the participation of 100 guests from 17 countries.

The festival will once again be supported by the Etxepare Basque Institute, featuring the presence of Basque authors, with Iban Zaldua as this year´s guest.

On 8 November, Zaldua, former member of the literary activism magazone ‘Volgako Batelariak’, will be in conversation with journalist and writer Gemma Ruiz Palá, Julio Villanueva Chang, founder of the magazine ‘Etiqueta Negra’, and Felipe Restrepo Pombi, writer, journalist and former director of the magazine’ Gatopardo’. The event will take place at the Peruvian-North American Cultural Centre at 16:00 (local time).

On November 9, he will present ‘A escondidas’, a revised and enhanced version of stories originally published in ‘Inoiz ez, inoiz e’" (2014). This new compilation, which he himself translated from Basque to Spanish, blends the fantastic and the real to explore human contradictions and subvert reality through deconstruction, addressing themes such as humour, climate change and artificial intelligence.

Moderated by writer Jorge Malpartida, the evento will also feature Rocío Santesteban, Peruvian writer, poet, academic and former congresswoman. Santesteban will present ‘El Quemadero’, a compilation of her short stories.

Iban Zaldua

Iban Zaldua (San Sebastian, 1966) is, above all, a short story writer. His books include ‘La isla de los antropólogos y otros relatos’ (Lengua de Trapo, 2002), ‘Itzalak’ (Erein, 2004), ‘Mentiras, mentiras, mentiras’ (Lengua de Trapo, 2006), ‘Porvenir’ (Lengua de Trapo, 2007, Euskadi Literature Prize), ‘Biodiscografías’ (Páginas de Espuma, 2015), ‘Inon ez, inoiz ez’ (Elkar, 2014) and ‘Como si todo hubiera pasado’ (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2018). He has also written novels, ‘Si Sabino vivía’ (Lengua de Trapo, 2005) and ‘La patria de todos los vascos’ (Lengua de Trapo, 2009), and essays ‘Ese idioma raro y poderoso’ (Lengua de Trapo, 2012, winner of Euskadi Prize for best essay in Spanish). His latest published works are the epistolary exchange ‘Correspondencias’, together with the Scottish writer James Robertson (Erein-Etxepare Euskal Institutua, 2019), ‘Una visita al Museo de Armería’ (Azala-Borradores del Futuro, 2020). Zaldua was a contributer to the literary magazine ‘Volgako Batelariak’.