Every day on Art&Seek, we’re talking to people who have tips on art in the time of social distancing. Share yours with us on Facebook, Instagram or @artandseek on Twitter. Click above to hear Cristina Fuentes La Roche of Hay Festival share her tip with KERA’s Nilufer Arsala. 

Literary fans will not meet up at Oak Cliff’s bookstore The Wild Detectives this year to have cultural discussions around literature, journalism and music in North and South America. Instead, the third edition of Hay Forum Dallas will celebrate big names in the literature community online.

Cristina Fuentes La Roche, director of Hay Festival international events, said the online editions still bring a sense of community. The original Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales launched its first online conference in May. 

“This is a very complicated year, but I think this medium brings new opportunities,” Fuentes La Roche said. “There’s a communion of people sharing the same stories.”

Salman Rushdie. Photo: Shutterstock

The Dallas forum, a part of Hay Festival Queretaro in Mexico, will begin on Sept. 2 with writer Salman Rushdie in conversation with Carmen Boullosa to talk about his new book, released in 2020, Quichotte. It’s a modern satirical novel based on Miguel de Cervantes’ classic. 

Following the kick off is writer and journalist Alma Guillermoprieto, who began her career covering the revolutionary movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1970s and ’80s. Guillermoprieto will discuss her latest book in Spanish called ¿Será que soy feminists? or Could I be a Feminist?, which addresses the exclusion and violence on women in Latin America.

On Sept. 6, notable journalists Maria Hinojosa, Gerardo Lissardy and Patricia Sulbarán will converse with Liliet Heredero, editor of BBC Mundo, on the 2020 election and the power of Spanish in the Trump era. The discussion will be in Spanish.

All sessions will be free, including Hay Festival Queretaro in Mexico, which attendees can also attend on the same days. At Hay Festival Queretaro, there will be appearances from Malala Yousafzai, Mario Vargas Llosa, Paul Auster and many others. 

Fuentes La Roche said the online editions have allowed more speakers to attend and exchange ideas with attendees. 

“More than ever we need to listen to the thinkers, to the creators, to the journalists, to the philosophers, to the musicians,” she said. “We need to create spaces that promote diversity of thought, through relative of thought, and see the world through different viewpoints.”

Hay Forum Dallas is in collaboration with The Mexican Consulate in Dallas, UTD (Center for Translation Studies), UTA (Center for Mexican American Studies), SMU (World Languages and Literature), UNT WGST (Women’s and Gender Studies), UNT (Latina/o and Mexican Studies) and PEN America.

Got a tip? Email Mia Estrada at mestrada@kera.org. You can follow her on Twitter @miaaestrada.

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