Hay book fest follows Garcia Marquez to Colombia

By Jason Webb

CARTAGENA, Colombia (Reuters) – Novelist Gabriel Garcia
Marquez wouldn’t travel to Wales to the Hay literary festival
– so the annual bookfest dubbed “the Woodstock of the mind”
has gone to him in his native Colombia.

The idea of bringing an offshoot of the festival held in
the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye to the beautiful, colonial walled
city of Cartagena was suggested by Mexican novelist Carlos
Fuentes, who told festival founder Peter Florence that that was
the only way Garcia Marquez would attend.

Colombia’s Nobel Prize-winner is now billed as guest of
honor at the four-day event kicking off on Thursday with talks
by authors including Britain’s Hanif Kureishi, Mexican writer
Alma Guillermoprieto and rising Colombian novelist Jorge
Franco.

The original 10-day Hay Festival in June — which draws
80,000 readers to the “the town of books” and which was once
compared to the legendary Woodstock rock concert by former U.S.
President Bill Clinton — has already fostered offshoots in
Italy and Brazil.

Garcia Marquez has provided the Colombia event’s first stir
by announcing he is suffering writers’ block and may not write
again.

“I have stopped writing,” said the 78-year-old author of
“One hundred years of Solitude” and “Nobody writes to the
Colonel,” in an interview with Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

“2005 was the first year of my life in which I haven’t
written a line,” said Garcia Marquez, who is widely known as
“Gabo.” He added that he didn’t want to write unless he knew he
was producing literature of value.

“With all the practice I’ve had, I could write a new novel
without any problems, but people can tell when you haven’t put
your heart into it.”

GABO THE GODFATHER

Garcia Marquez, who was brought up in the small town of
Aracataca on Colombia’s Caribbean coast but now lives in Mexico
City, will attend the festival seminars and discussions but may
not speak in public, Florence told Reuters.

“In a godfatherly sort of way, he’s looking after all the
international writers,” Florence said.

Garcia Marquez, who is notoriously shy of the media
spotlight, has never responded to invitations to the Hay
festival. He will attend the Cartagena event because he loves
the town and it’s in his own country, Fuentes told Florence.

The Hay Festival’s Cartagena branch will become annual and
will not only give writers from different countries and
continents an opportunity to talk in picturesque surroundings.
Some 700 participants are expected this week, but attendance
will likely grow.

It is also a chance for Colombia’s publishing industry to
boost its profile within the Spanish-speaking world, whose book
business is dominated by editorial houses based in Spain,
Florence said.

“If Colombian publishers can get a bit of muscle behind
them, in the shape of international writers, then they can take
on Madrid and Barcelona,” he said.

But not everyone is happy. Newspaper El Tiempo reported
that Efraim Medina, a maverick young Colombian writer known for
his novel “Batman and Robin’s mutual masturbation techniques,”
hopes to set up a rival event that he says will show the real
side of Cartagena, which is struggling with an influx of
refugees from Colombia’s four-decade-old war.

Medina said he intends to call his event “Not the Hay
Festival.”