Lisbon, April 17, 2025 (Lusa) - Writers Amin Maalouf, Paul Lynch and Juan Villoro will be present at the 5L literary festival, which kicks off on 9 May in Portugal's capital city, Lisbon, with a programme focusing on threats to democracies and the challenges of Artificial Intelligence. The festival's programme, presented on Thursday, includes concerts, talks, shows, exhibitions, workshops and lectures, and includes a preview on May 5, dedicated to the World Day of the Portuguese Language, with an educational programme taking place at the Palácio Galveias Library. The festival will take place on May 9, 10 and 11 and will occupy the ‘Beato Innovation District’ for the first time, for an ‘eclectic programme’, put on by the Lisbon Library Network, which reflects on the dialogue between Language, Literature and Innovation, in an attempt to answer the questions that new technologies pose to the areas of communication and the written word. "In this edition, we dared a little more and thought of a programme aimed at people who work in the field of culture. The Lisboa 5L Festival is making its small contribution to a path of reflection, empowerment and the fight against disinformation and other forms of censorship, these days that, although real, often seem like fiction to us," says Edite Guimarães, head of the library network division. Thus, to mark the start of the festival, on the 9th there will be a talk on "Disinformation, book censorship and the end of democracy", by American librarian and curator Tracie Hall, an arts advocate who in 2023 received the Franklin D. Roosevelt Institute's Medal for Freedom of Expression. Tracie Hall will focus on the fact that solid democracies around the world are struggling with the rise of deliberately misleading information, limited access to books and reading, and legislation and propaganda that make equal education less accessible, analysing the consequences and who benefits. This will be followed by a discussion on "Artificial intelligence in writing and education - bridges to the future", which will see Patrícia Anzini, Beatriz Santana and Inês Anta de Barros debate how writing survives this technology, moderated by Jorge Amorim, a specialist in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. Closing the day will be the multimedia show ‘Words are made of words’, with the percussion group Drumming, actress Beatriz Batarda and author and illustrator António Jorge Gonçalves, followed by a DJ set by Associação Rimas ao Minuto. On the 10th, the highlight will be a conversation between Lebanese-French writer Amin Maalouf and journalist José Mário Silva about the promises of technological progress and the risk that they are, in the end, just another chapter in the "shipwreck of civilisations". During the day, there will also be talks on Portuguese experimental literature, on the Portuguese of the future and on the origins of the power of language. There will also be several debates: António Feijó and Pedro Mexia will discuss whether there are still literary avant-gardes; João Paulo Silvestre and Isabel Macedo will talk about resistance to spelling agreements; Carlos Fiolhais, Luis Filipe Silva and Rui Cardoso Martins will discuss whether science fiction is no longer fiction; linguists António Coutinho and João Veloso will discuss inclusive language; Valério Romão, Sandra Guerreiro Dias and Sal Nunkachov will talk about experimental art and poetry. Another debate on this day will bring comedian Ricardo Araújo Pereira and editor Francisco José Viegas face to face, talking about ludism and how this movement - English workers who in the Industrial Revolution opposed the replacement of manual labour by looms - could have a parallel today in the world of writing. Two concerts close the second day of the festival: the first, a narrative, is performed by Ana Sofia Paiva, Jorge Cunha Machado and Simon Franke, and the second is a show by the Lisbon Poetry Orchestra. On the last day there will be a conversation between Irish writer Paul Lynch, winner of the 2023 Booker Prize for his novel ‘Song of the Prophet’, a dystopia that imagines how easy it can be for a democratic country to slide into dictatorship, and literary critic Isabel Lucas. Mexican writer Juan Villoro, author of the essay ‘I am not a robot’, will be in conversation with journalist José Alberto de Carvalho about the influence of algorithms in these times, pointing out that "we are the first generation of people to be asked to prove, in front of a machine, that we belong to the human species". ‘Dystopian fiction imagining disasters’, in an era in which dystopias “threaten to surpass fiction”, by Alberto Manguel, and “The Portuguese language in the age of AI”, on the “disruptive impact” represented by this “technological shock in the history of natural languages”, by António Horta Branco, are the two talks scheduled for this day. The topic ‘Language control - an instrument of ideological repression typical of literary dystopias - has left the realm of fiction to become a disturbing reality’ sets the tone for a debate with several language experts. Also marking the third and final day of the festival are the debates ‘The future of literature is its past’, with José Pacheco Pereira and Abel Barros Batista, ‘Rereading Thomas More's “Utopia”’, with Rui Tavares and Miguel Morgado, ‘The language of the machine’, with Arlindo Oliveira and Robert Clowes, “What is only possible for humans”, with Dulce Maria Cardoso and Lídia Jorge, and “The craft of language”, centred on the use of words in rap, with Samuel Úria and Capicua. The festival ends with a closing show by Ana Lua Caiano, who will perform a concert exploring the fusion between electronic music, traditional Portuguese music and the sounds of everyday life. AL/AYLS // AYLS Lusa