Videos

Cheers To New! is a Staged Reading Series featuring new plays and a drinking game. Come drink along with us and experience some new work in a new way! We are always Pay-What-You-Can, and will take any donations you’d like to give at the door.

August’s play is House is Open by Cain Rodriguez
Directed by Cameron Casey

House is Open is a tongue-in-cheek look at what we give to regional theater and what it takes back.

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Our friend and local legend producer Black Taffy comes back to The Wild Detectives for an electronic and visual experience.

Tickets ($10) here.

Black Taffy (Donovan Jones) is a Dallas-based composer and performer whose current focus lies in pairing ambient music with large bass and percussion. The first born son of Pentecostal music ministers, Donovan grew up witnessing the power music has to induce trance and encourage spiritual awakening. Eventually drawing parallels between christianity, voodoo, and the occult, he left the former to immerse himself in the latter. Sometimes performing with only Vibraphone and cassette decks, he frequently employs the use of tape loops and other antiquated mediums to create pillowy worlds of wow and flutter.

Listen to Black Taffy here.

Ark will open for Black Taffy. Anthony Mendoza Martins [aka ark] is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, photographer/filmmaker, screen printer and multi-media artist from and currently residing in San Antonio, Texas.

Listen to Ark here.

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Following the success of the first installment of Hay Forum Dallas in 2018, this year, The Wild Detectives and Hay Festival combine forces again to create one of the most interesting literary and cultural events in the City of Dallas.

2018 was dedicated to celebrating the Bogotá39 list, which selects the 39 most important writers of Latin America under the age of 40. For our 2019 edition, we have invited an eclectic group of guests with one thing in common, pushing boundaries.

Our idea for this year’s edition is to bring figures from different fields like journalism, literature, activism and music, who while working in different disciplines, go that extra mile to make our reality more tangible and real, despite the consequences. We believe the different guests that are coming to Dallas this year have made an extraordinary effort to show us new perspectives of the world we live in and the different directions we can take going forward.
During the days of 7th and 8th of September, you will be able to attend the following panels:

Migration, Borders & Violence in America

Reporting migration and violence in the US and Latin America.
With Oscar Martinez, Dianne Solis & John Gibler.

Oscar Martinez, Dianne Solis and John Gibler will discuss their respective works reporting and writing about some of the deadliest phenomena of our time. Oscar Martinez (Salvador), aside from his regular collaborations with the newspaper El Faro, has written several books documenting the impossible journey of migrants from Central America to North America and the gang violence in both Salvador and the US. John Gibler (Texas,Mexico) has made numerous investigative reports about violence in Mexico and Central America. He has also published several books, among them one which is considered one of the most thorough works on the 43 missing Ayotzinapa students. Dianne Solis (Texas) is a senior reporter who has worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Dallas Morning News, reporting about the heroin outburst in New Orleans after Katrina and the severe impact that border control measures have on children.

Óscar Martínez is a writer and journalist from El Savador. He writes for ElFaro.net, the first online newspaper in Latin America. The original edition of his book Los migrantes que no importan was translated to English as The Beast. Martínez is currently writing chronicles and articles for El Faro’s project, Sala Negra, investigating gang violence in Latin America. In 2008, Martínez won the Fernando Benítez National Journalism Prize in Mexico, and in 2009, he was awarded the Human Rights Prize at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University in El Salvador. Martinez has ridden the Beast eight times himself, interviewing people on their way to the U.S

Dianne Solis is an american journalist. Her stories have taken her to post-Katrina New Orleans, inside families fractured by addiction to starter heroin, to immigration courts for children, and to a mosque where the Ramadan fast was broken with a FBI agent. As a foreign correspondent with The Wall Street Journal and a Texas-based reporter with the Dallas Morning News, she’s written on narcotics, gangs and the impact of drug violence and corruption on ordinary people. She also has lectured on reporting in immigrant communities caught in the most significant crackdown in decades. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University.

John Gibler is an American journalist who predominately writes from and about Mexico. He is the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War and I Couldn’t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us: An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa. He is also correspondent for Pacifica Radio’s KPFA in Mexico. He has reported on the ground from the Zapatistas Other Campaign, the protests against electoral fraud in Mexico City, and the uprising in Oaxaca. He has reported for Left Turn, In These Times, Common Dreams, Yes! Magazine, Colorlines and Democracy Now!

War on Women
The contemporary war on women.
With Miriam Toews, Cristina Rivera Garza & Leni Zumas.

In Miriam Toew’s latest novel (Women Talking), more than a hundred Mennonite women were systematically violated and assaulted for years by the male members of their community, many of who argued that their bruises were the product of demons or “wild female imagination.” In Leni Zumas’ latest novel (Red Clocks), abortion is illegal again in the US and women are persecuted. Cristina Rivera Garza, one of Mexico´s best known writers and one of the prominent voices of feminism in Latin America, is known for her take in literature as she chooses not to inform but to explore the limits of human experience. Fiction and Non Fiction will cross boundaries in this astounding conversation between three of the most relevant authors of our time.

Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer, best known for her novels A Complicated Kindness and All My Puny Sorrows. She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award for body of work. She is also a two-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Leni Zumas is an American writer. She won the 2019 Oregon Book Award for her national bestselling novel Red Clocks, which was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Neukom Prize for Speculative Fiction. Red Clocks was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and was named a Best Book of 2018 by The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Entropy, and the New York Public Library. Vulture called it one of the 100 Most Important Books of the 21st Century So Far.

Cristina Rivera Garza is a Mexican author and professor best known for her fictional work, with various novels such as Nadie me verá llorar (No One Will See Me Cry) winning a number of Mexico’s highest literary awards as well as awards abroad. The author was born in the state of Tamaulipas, near the U.S. border and has developed her career in teaching and writing on both sides of the border. She has taught history and creative writing at various universities Awards include the Juan Vicente Melo National Short Story Award, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (the only author to win this award twice) and the Anna Seghers International Prize.

Journalism & Politics
Is it all about politics?
With Jon Lee Anderson & Ben Fountain.

Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker, has profiled leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Augusto Pinochet. He has also covered numerous conflicts, including those in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Iraq. Anderson will be in conversation with Dallas acclaimed writer Ben Fountain, receiver of the PEN/Hemingway price, frequent collaborator of The Guardian, and author whose latest book Beautiful Country Burn Again, describes the existential crisis the US has faced throughout history -including the one we’re currently in.

Jon Lee Anderson is an American biographer, author, investigative reporter, war correspondent and staff writer for The New Yorker, reporting from war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Israel, El Salvador, Ireland, Lebanon, Iran, and throughout the Middle East as well as during Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts with K38 Water Safety as documented in the New Yorker article Leaving Desire. Anderson has also written for The New York Times, Harper’s, Life, and The Nation. Anderson has profiled political leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Augusto Pinochet.

Ben Fountain is an American fiction writer. He has won many awards including a PEN/Hemingway award for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories (2007) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for his debut novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012). His latest book Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night.

Language, Activism & Indigenous Communities
With Yásnaya Elena Aguilar and more tbc.

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar is a Mexican linguist, writer, translator, human rights activist and Ayuujk researcher. She works with Ayuujk, Spanish and English languages. She is member of Colegio Mixe, a collective that researches and promotes the Mixe culture. She has taken part and given talks, conferences and workshops in both national and international forums. In February 2019 she was invited to the ordinary session of the 14th Legislature in the Chamber of Deputies within the framework of the International Year of Indigenous Languages to give a speech in Mixe, in which she alluded the condition of Mexico’s indigenous languages

Bending The Boundaries of Poetry and Narrative
A walk in the outskirts of Literature.
With Luis Felipe Fabre in conversation with Cristina Rivera Garza

Luis Felipe Fabre is a mexican poet and essayist. Born in Mexico City. Fabre wants to “touch the world” with words, because words are the way to understand the world. After his studies in Communications and Spanish and Latin American literature, he published several volumes and collections of essays. Besides that, he teaches literature, is the editor of a magazine on modern art, and has a great fascination for astrology. Fabre is seen as one of the most interesting young writers of Latin America.

This event could not be possible without the help of The Mexican Consulate in Dallas, UTD (Center for Translation Studies), UTA (Center for Mexican American Studies), SMU (World Languages and Literature), UNT (Latina/o and Mexican Studies), PEN America and Aeromexico.

Special thanks to our friends at Oddfellows, AJ Vagavonds and Revellers Hall.

ABOUT HAY FESTIVAL
www.hayfestival.org

Hay Festival is a not-for-profit organization that brings readers and writers together to share stories and ideas in sustainable events around the world. The festivals inspire, examine and entertain, inviting participants to imagine the world as it is and as it might be.

Nobel Prize-winners and novelists, scientists and politicians, historians and musicians talk with audiences in a dynamic exchange of ideas. The Festival’s global conversation shares the latest thinking in the arts and sciences with curious audiences live, in print and online. Hay Festival also runs wide programmes of education work supporting coming generations of writers and culturally hungry audiences of all ages.

In 1987, the festival was dreamt up around a kitchen table in Hay. Thirty-one years later, the unique marriage of exacting conversations and entertainment for all ages has travelled to editions in 30 locations, from the historic town of Cartagena in Colombia to the heart of cities in Peru, Mexico, Spain and Denmark. The organization now reaches a global audience of hundreds of thousands every year and continues to grow and innovate, building partnerships and initiatives alongside some of the leading bodies in arts and the media.

Acclaimed author, actor and writer Stephen Fry is President of the organization; Peter Florence is Director; and Caroline Michel, CEO of leading literary and talent agency Peters Fraser + Dunlop, is Chair of the Festival board.

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