Hay Forum Dallas will expand to a three-day festival in 2024

Hay Forum Dallas plans to expand into a three-day festival sprawling across multiple Oak Cliff venues next year, another sign of the city’s growth as a literary hub. In 2018, The Wild Detectives bookstore landed the first Hay Forum in the United States, with the sixth edition scheduled for Sept. 9-10.

Rather than a series of readings, the free forum has been built around discussions with authors about contemporary literary, political and social issues, particularly as they affect the Americas.

This year’s edition features 11 writers from Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and the United States. Among them are Dallas novelist Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Beautiful Country Burn Again) and Juan Cárdenas, a Colombian art critic, curator, novelist and translator who participated in the first Hay Forum Dallas.

The Hay Festival was launched 35 years ago in the small, books-crazed town of Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Since then, it has branched out across Europe and Latin America, both with smaller literary forums like in Dallas and full-blown festivals.

Wild Detectives co-owner Javier García del Moral, a civil engineer from La Rioja, Spain, was attending his second Hay Festival in Querétaro, Mexico, in 2017 when he approached the organizers about bringing a version to Dallas. Hay had just released its second “Bogotá 39″ list of best Latin American authors under the age of 40. Seven of those writers appeared at the inaugural Hay Forum in Dallas.

“Following the success of previous editions, the Hay Organization has chosen Dallas as the perfect setting to cultivate a grand festival akin to the ones held in the U.K., Mexico, Spain, Peru and Colombia,” García del Moral says. “Our aspiration is for Dallas to become the Hay Festival’s counterpart in the U.S.”

Besides The Wild Detectives in Oak Cliff’s Bishop Arts District, the newly expanded 2024 edition — likely to be called Hay Festival Dallas to reflect its growth — will be held at the historic Texas Theatre and at Sketches of Spain, a pincho restaurant owned by García del Moral and his bookstore partner, Paco Vique, who opened The Wild Detectives in 2014.

García del Moral also plans to reach out to other Oak Cliff bookstores and arts spaces like the city-owned Oak Cliff Cultural Center as potential venues.

“In addition to the standard program, the aim is to arrange community-centered events, such as workshops and educational sessions,” he says. “The approach will closely resemble that of the Oak Cliff Film Fest, but with literature, journalism and activism taking the lead role. There will also be occasions centered around film and music.”

At this year’s Hay Forum Dallas, Pulitzer Prize winner Hernan Diaz of Argentina will discuss power dynamics within capitalism and its effects on human existence with Jacob Rubin, creative writing chair at Southern Methodist University.

The first day also will include Mexican journalist Daniela Gomez talking with Dallas Morning News reporter María Ramos Pacheco about multimedia storytelling as a way of examining the kidnapping and murder of women in Mexico and the government’s complicity in this femicide.

The first day wraps up with a dance experience in the Afro Perreo style by musicians El Nick and Elkin Pautt and a deejay set by Aniya Henré.

On day two, American poets Roger Reeves and Melania Luisa Marte will discuss storytelling with verse on a panel moderated by Cristina Rodriguez; Cárdenas and fellow Latin American author Brenda Navarro of Mexico will explore the ways in which translation of their work from Spanish to English creates a rich interplay between cultures; and Fountain, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, will talk with Daniel Peña about Fountain’s latest book, Devil Makes Three, scheduled to be published Sept. 26.

“After all the work we’ve poured into the sixth edition of Hay Forum Dallas, it’s crystal clear how essential this city is for an event like ours,” García del Moral says. “We see cultures from Latin America and North America mingling here every day, and this festival aims to capture the essence of our daily experiences that shape us while living in Texas.”

Details

Hay Forum Dallas will be Sept. 9-10 at The Wild Detectives, 314 W. Eighth St. Free. RSVP at thewilddetectives.com.

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