The 2021 Hay Festival in Querétaro will be presented this year under a new hybrid model: 30% of events will be in person, while the rest will be online.

The festival, a celebration of culture and ideas that will be held from September 1 to 5, will present all its concerts in person, as well as 33 discussions and workshops. All events are free.

Festival director Cristina Fuentes explained that the hybrid model will allow conversations that can only take place in person.

“Now more than ever we are lacking conversation, which the Hay Festival has always created: a space to discuss, to imagine the world and to give space to the experts,” Fuentes said. “In this culture of social media, where everything is black and white, we lack time to converse and imagine a new world.”

The program will include 170 participants, including four Nobel Prize winners: Svetlana Alexievich and J.M.G. Le Clézio, who won the Nobel Prize in literature, as well as Joseph Stiglitz and Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel in economics.

Other participants include Mexican writers Sabina Berman, Élmer Mendoza, Fernanda Melchor and Juan Villoro and international authors including Pilar Quintana, Santiago Roncagliolo, Amin Maalouf, David Grossman and Patrick Deville.

But the festival does not stop with literature. Scientist Avi Loeb, pianist James Rhodes, feminist collective LASTESIS and Café Tacvba guitarist and composer Joselo Rangel will also be participating in the program.

With reports from Milenio and El Universal