Guadalajara, Jalisco, October 03, 2023
Culture unites us; FIL Guadalajara brings us together
The largest fair of its kind in the Spanish language will offer a rich literary, academic and cultural program of more than 3,000 activities, with the participation of 600 writers from 45 countries and the presence of the European Union as Guest of Honor
With almost 50 days to go before the start of the 37th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), everything is ready for the most important literary and cultural event in Spanish. From November 25 to December 3, with the participation of the European Union as Guest of Honor, FIL Guadalajara will reaffirm its importance among readers who enthusiastically attend its halls and corridors every year, as well as among professionals who are part of the publishing chain, and who consider it an essential event for the publishing business in Ibero-America. This year, more than three thousand literary, academic, artistic, professional, youth and children's activities are waiting for the more than 800 thousand attendees.
At a press conference held this morning at the Enrique Díaz de León Auditorium of the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), the general program of activities for 2023 was announced. The activity was attended by Ricardo Villanueva Lomelí, General Rector of the University of Guadalajara (UdeG); Gautier Mignot, ambassador of the European Union in Mexico; Marisol Schulz Manaut, general director of FIL Guadalajara; Karla Planter Pérez, Rector of the Centro Universitario de los Altos of the UdeG and executive coordinator of the academic program of FIL Guadalajara, and remotely, Patricio Jeretič, curator of the European Union program.
Prominent figures of contemporary literature, such as Elia Barceló, Elísabet Benavent, Piedad Bonnet, María Dueñas, Morgana Kretzmann, Andrés Neuman, Pascal Quignard, Julia Quinn, Élmer Mendoza, Sergio Ramírez, Angelo Tijssens, Margarita García Robayo, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Tatiana Țîbuleac, Jorge F. Hernández, Elvira Lindo and María José Ferrada, among more than 650 writers from 45 countries and 33 different languages, will be the protagonists of FIL Guadalajara's various programs, which will cover different regions, trends and genres.
Among the awards and tributes that are presented every year during the FIL are the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages 2023, obtained by the Mexican poet Coral Bracho, while the great Italian writer Dacia Maraini, will be responsible for opening the Carlos Fuentes Literary Program and will receive, from Silvia Lemus, the medal that bears the name of the author of Where the Air Is Clear. The Publishing Merit Award will be presented to Margarita de Orellana and Alberto Ruy Sánchez. José Porfirio Tamez Solís will receive the Tribute to the Librarian and José María Murià will receive the Tribute to the Bibliophile. The La Catrina Caricature Tribute will go to Argentine cartoonist Juan Matías Loiseau, better known as Tute, and the ArpaFIL Tribute to Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao.
The FIL will also be attended by James Assir Sarao Cauich, winner of the American Indigenous Literary Award Alejandro von Düben, who won the José Emilio Pacheco City and Nature Award, as well as the Portuguese writer Alice Vieira, winner of the SM Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature. The Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize and the Fernando Benítez National Tribute for Cultural Journalism will also be presented, which will be announced in the coming weeks.
The literature of the world will be present in the different programs of the FIL Guadalajara, such as Latin America Viva, Naming Central America because Central America Counts and Destinaçao Brazil. The round table on literature will be represented by countries such as Chile, Colombia, Norway, Quebec, Galicia, Morocco and Georgia. The Pleasure of Reading Galas, the International Storytellers Encounter and the 22 sessions of the Poetry Salon will also be part of the literary exhibition that will arrive in Guadalajara.
More than 630 book presentations will be part of this edition. Among them No te veré morir, by Antonio Muñoz Molina; Poesía reunida (1977-2023), by Coral Bracho; Extrañas, by Guillermo Arriaga; El peso de vivir en la Tierra, by David Toscana; Me llamo cuerpo que no está, by Cristina Rivera Garza; Cuatro veranos, by Benito Taibo; Un cuento de Navidad, by Alejandro Zambra; De todas las flores, by Natalia Lafourcade; Contra la naturaleza secreta de las cosas de este mundo, by Patricio Pron; Las luces de febrero, by Joana Marcús; En la boca del lobo, by Elvira Lindo; Los genios, by Jaime Bayly; Umbilical, by Andrés Neuman, and La escalera eléctrica, by Ana García Bergua. In addition, the Publishing House of the University of Guadalajara is working on a tribute book that brings together photographs, fragments of texts written by Raúl Padilla López, as well as comments from authors and people close to him.
Young audiences are very important for FIL, that is why this year in the sessions of A Thousand Young People with... authors of the of the caliber of Coral Bracho, Elia Barceló, Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Jorge F. Hernández and Andrés Oppenheimer. The Letters to the Author Contest will be dedicated to the French writer Nathalie Bernard and her book La gardienne de la forêt. FIL Youth will feature talks such as "Mafalda, the comic strip that changed the world", with the participation of Daniel Divinsky, editor of Quino, and Benito Taibo; "From alpha males to men of the future", "The culture of roomies", "Embracing my trans adolescence" or "LGBTQ+ literature", in addition to the National Booktuber 2023 Meeting and the table "Booktok: the book-loving community in TikTok". In addition, FIL Echoes will include around 130 face-to-face sessions in which authors from 33 countries will visit UdeG high schools, both in the Metropolitan Area and in other municipalities in the state of Jalisco.
The Comic + Graphic Novel Program is one of the most awaited spaces by the public attending the FIL and will come to life from Thursday, November 30 to Sunday, December 3. It will feature the participation of great personalities, including Trino and Catalina Bu, who along Daniel Divinsky will pay tribute to Quino, whose characters will be the theme for this year's Rius Forum. In addition, creators such as Carlo Chable, Pénélope Bagieu, Jens Kjartan Styve, Alexandre Couture, Pau Márquez and Changos Perros will be present at the Comic Program.
FIL Science, the science outreach program of the FIL reaches its tenth edition with a rich program where the relationship between science and literature will be explored. Topics such as computing and quantum physics, vaccines, artificial intelligence, myths and realities of cancer, marine life and ocean pollution are some of the 33 activities in which prestigious scientists, specialists and science communicators such as Antonio Lazcano, Alberto Casas, Tommaso Calarco, Carlos Coello, Brooke Bessesen, Rogelio Tomás, Alejandro Mohar and Cristina Romera Castillo will participate.
Like every year, FIL Guadalajara will be a space for the discussion of ideas and thought. Its program includes the participation of almost 300 specialists from 36 countries, including Alan Riding, Andrea Jelinek, Carmen Aristegui, Daniel Innerarity, Denise Dresser, Göran Therborn, Héctor Aguilar Camín, Joan Subirats, Jorge Castañeda, Lisa Lang, Manuel Castells, Sabina Berman, Shada Islam, Clara Brugada and Vygaudas Ušackas. In addition, 59 forums and activities will be held, such as the Seminar of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Women in Power. The course of Mexico, Artificial Intelligence: between utopias, dystopias and realities, the International Meeting of Civil Society and Government, Nexos Forum: What went wrong? Mexico 1994-2023, Thinking Europe: the future of the European Union and its philosophical project, Reflections and narratives for conflict and for peace, A 100 years after the myth: Pancho Villa, the History Colloquium or the Gender Meeting.
The FIL Guadalajara is currently the largest platform for publishing businesses in Latin America, and more than 18,000 professionals from 49 countries are expected to attend this edition. The Rights Program will hold more than 100 round tables, while the editorial offer will be distributed in 43 thousand square meters of exhibition, which will house about 450 thousand titles from 2,200 publishers from 49 countries. Around 130 professional and educational activities are planned for this edition, such as the International Forum of Publishers and Book Professionals, the International Librarians Colloquium, the International Booksellers Forum and the San Jerónimo Translation and Interpretation Congress, as well as FILustra, whose opening and closing lectures will be given by Gusti and Isol, respectively. The International Publishing Design Forum and the Meeting of Independent Publishers will also be held, while the Reading Promoters Conference will be opened with a keynote lecture by Slovenian writer, editor and specialist in reading topics Miha Kovač.
FIL Kids. Retronauts of the Future
FIL Kids, the favorite pavilion of the Guadalajara International Book Fair dedicated to the formation of readers, this year will be transformed into a time capsule, where children (digital natives) will interact with objects from the past using their senses, which will lead them to discover new forms of play and recognize themselves as storytellers. With around 1,500 sessions of 17 workshops to promote reading and creative writing and 79 performances by 28 companies from Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Austria, Portugal, France, Brazil and Chile, as well as 36 sessions of spontaneous workshops, visitors will be invited to become "Retronauts of the future".
The 17 FIL Kids workshops, which are divided into four age ranges: zero to two years old; three to six years old; seven to nine years old; and ten to twelve years old, will offer experiences that, through games, music, art and literature, will open thresholds through which the retronauts will explore our past.
In the spontaneous Workshops, publishers and institutions experiment with various disciplines and poetic language. This edition will have the participation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Mathematics Research Center, editorial Almadía and Oink Ediciones publishing houses. Creative writing workshops in the Wixárika language as Niuki Wakari: Playing to tell stories, or the participation of authors such as Markéta Pilátová, Judith Berg, Aida Chequer, Sofía Orozco and Jumko Ogata will be part of this program.
In addition, attendees will get to know national and international stage proposals such as the European Union Youth Orchestra, the Epic of Gilgamesh with beatbox, Luis Delgadillo and the Keliguanes¸Cumbialkanic; the multimedia show LOVO; the plays Konrad, the Factory-Made Boy, Men of Maize or The Monster in My House, montages of clown and different proposals in collaboration with FiCHo, International Circus Festival and CHou, such as Flap!, Embrulho or The ONE & the one, among others. The puppets could not be missing and FIL Children will offer the proposals Ñu and the fire, Cletus the dogcat and other productions in collaboration with the Nortíteres Festival. In addition, the American conservationist Brooke Bessesen and the Mexican documentary filmmaker Pablo Montaño, will inspire activism in children with the visual art of Arturo López Pío, in Children activists, sustainable future.
With a clear conviction that playing is a right, the University Museum of Contemporary Art of the UNAM (MUAC) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) are joining forces to transform the walls of the Children's picnic area and invite them to take on the world of culture with play, their own voices and experiences, creating cultural spaces.
European Union, Guest of Honor
The participation of the European Union (EU) as Guest of Honor of the 37th edition of the FIL will take place under the slogan “Building a Union of Cultures” and seeks to promote dialogue, encourage cultural exchanges, strengthen mutual knowledge and establish long-term artistic and professional collaborations and co-creations between the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean. The EU pavilion, with its 1,130 m2 and an architecture inspired by the values of sustainability, inclusion, digitalization, hospitality and circular economy, will become a meeting space between professionals, authors, artists, guests and visitors. With a central agora, two stages, a bookstore, a digital media library and an interactive cultural facility, it will host diverse literary, cultural and artistic events presented by the EU and its member states.
The EU literary program contemplates the participation of more than 70 writers from the 27 EU countries and Ukraine, which will reflect the European cultural plurality, as well as the diversity of literary genres and styles. Dacia Maraini, Tatiana Țibuleac, Lídia Jorge, Pascal Quignard, María Dueñas, Andrei Kurkov, Colm Tóibín, Mária Ferenčuhová, Judit Berg and András Forgách are just some of the authors who will be taking part. All of them will dialogue with each other and with Latin American authors, as well as with the FIL audience. Also noteworthy is the extension of the EU program to the FIL Youth, FIL Kids and FIL Pensamiento sections, the latter with the participation of intellectuals, academics, politicians, authors and civil society actors from the EU.
Musicians and artists will also be part of the extensive program that includes musical and dance performances, a European film festival, various visual arts exhibitions, as well as a gastronomic program. The nine nights of the FIL Forum will feature a program characterized by the multiplicity of regions and countries present, the diversity of artistic expressions, co-creation and dialogue between cultures. Highlights include the participation of the European Union Youth Orchestra, the European Jazz Festival, the Balkan Adriatic Festival, a Nordic evening, contemporary dance with Sasha Waltz, electronic music, rap and a Spain-Mexico festival. For its part, the Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara (MUSA) will host different exhibitions, including one of immersive digital art. The Cabañas Museum will host the exhibition Mosaic. Italic code of a timeless art, while Guadalajara's Chapultepec promenade will display a photographic exhibition by Daniel Mordzinski dedicated to Latin American and European writers.
The program for book industry professionals includes the participation of more than 50 publishers and industry professionals from the 27 EU countries to facilitate and promote mutually enriching collaborations with professionals and the Mexican and Latin American book industry.
Check out the full program of the FIL Guadalajara 2023
Photographs of participants and press conferences
For further information contact:
Press Office and Publicity General coordinator, Mariño González at the phone number (+52) 33 3810 0331, ext. 952