The University of Guadalajara, through a project created by the Environmental Sciences Museum as part of the University’s Cultural Center, and with the support of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, has established the José Emilio Pacheco City and Nature Award. The prize, which will be given for the first time this year, will be dedicated to poetry. The winning author, who must write in Spanish and have at least ten unpublished poems or poems published in the last five years that are related to nature, urban sustainability, socio-ecological harmony and environmental conservation, will be given a purse of US $10,000. The award is dedicated to poet José Emilio Pacheco, whose work explores the duality between cities and nature.
Created by the University of Guadalajara, and with the collaboration of the National Institute for Indigenous Languages, the Culture Ministry, the National Commission for the Development of the Indigenous Cultures and Jalisco’s Department of Education, the American Indigenous Literature Award is granted to enrich, protect and promote the legacy and richness of Mexico’s indigenous peoples through literature in all its forms, and to and acknowledge and further develop the careers and works of indigenous authors. The award, which carries a purse of US $25,000, will be given for the fourth time at the 2016 FIL Guadalajara.
The SM Ibero-American Award for Literature for Children and Young People was implemented in 2005, the year of Ibero-American literature, with the goal of promoting literature for children and young people throughout Ibero-America. The award is given out each year during the Guadalajara International Book Fair to recognize writers of literature for children and young people and carries a purse of US $30,000.
Juan Carlos Quezadas
Karime Cardona Cury
With the goal of creating a network that helps to encourage the work of illustrators of books for children and young people in Ibero-America, the SM Foundation and the FIL Guadalajara invites illustrators to submit their work to be included in the Annual Ibero-American Illustration Catalog. The 45 works selected will be displayed in an exposition at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. In addition, illustrators will have the opportunity to work on an illustrated book with Ediciones SM and the winner will be given US $5,000. You can find more information at: www.iberoamericailustra.com
Program Search
Literary Program
European Union, Guest of Honor
Literary Program
Book promotion in a digital world. What do the writers tell us?
Participants: Jacek Dukaj, Idoia Iribertegui, Frank Westerman
Moderator: Claudia Neira Bermúdez
Jacek Dukaj
Invitado de Honor(1974) prose-writer, philosopher by education. Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature (2009) for his novel Ice. His works have been translated into English, German, Russian, Czech, Slovak, Macedonian, Hungarian, Italian, Bulgarian, Azerbaijani and recently his novel The cathedral was translated into Spanish (La Catedral) and brought out by the publishing group Fondo de Cultura Económica (supported financially by the Polish Book Institute) to the Mexican market last year. He made his debut very early, at sixteen years old, in the journal Fantastyka, and quickly gained recognition as one of the most promising writers of literature of the fantastic (some consider him a successor to Stanisław Lem). He has been many times given the Janusz A. Zajdel Award, which has a great deal of prestige in fantasy circles. Tomasz Bagiński made an animated film called Cathedral based on motifs from a Dukaj short story, garnering an Oscar nomination in the process. In his first collection of prose, Xavras Wyżryn (1997), Dukaj created an alternate vision of Polish history. His following books – including the novels Black Oceans, Extensa, Other Songs, and An ideal Imperfection – confirmed his ability to make free use of various fantastical prose conventions, with even a certain virtuosity, putting elements of science fiction, fantasy and cyber-punk into the mix. Dukaj has an extraordinary facility for creating complete fictional worlds in his prose, imagined down to the minutest detail, and based on coherent philosophical or scientific principles. He sometimes creates them as thought experiments; for example, in Other Songs the author tried to show how the world would look if the ancient Greek philosophers were right in how they saw its nature and mechanisms. Generally, however, the writer’s incredible inventiveness serves to contemplate the possible outcomes of the development of civilization and evolution of mankind (in An Ideal Imperfection, a novel that takes place in the 29th century, he describes post-human creatures, among others). A major advantage of Dukaj’s prose is his sharply outlined protagonists; they are often people who must play vital roles in the history of a given society, but who are marked by some flaw, and thus are forced to grapple with themselves, such as Hieronim Berbelek in Other Songs or Adam Zamojski in An Ideal Imperfection. Dukaj’s books are not only impeccable in terms of technique, they also appeal to readers through their refined humor and inventive language (the writer created a completely new language for his post-people). The author of Black Oceans writes multi-layered texts, which are snapped up both by people who simply love a good story, and by readers who would like to delve into the writer’s anthropological and philosophical concepts.
Idoia Iribertegui
Invitado de Honor(Pamplona, 1973) studied Fine Arts and has been working as a professional illustrator since 2003. Her work is mainly focused on the publishing sector, illustrating her own texts and those of other authors. She has published 10 books, some of which have been translated into other languages such as Polish and Korean. Some highlights of her work would include the Lolita butterfly collection of books (Glenat, Ediciones B, 2009-2015), based on the character created by Idoia herself, her graphic novel Olivia y el sexo (Grijalbo, 2019), Regla N.1 (Bromera, 2021) and most recently Desdichas de una familia Victoriana (Triqueta verde, 2022).
Her last book won the illustrators exhibition award at the 2023 Bologna children’s book fair. Her work has been seen in exhibitions in Spain, the UK, Italy and South Korea.
Frank Westerman
Invitado de Honor(1964) Frank is a Dutch writer and former journalist living in Amsterdam. He studied tropical agriculture at Wageningen University, lived for a year in Peru among the Aymara-indians of the Andes and worked as a newspaper correspondent in Belgrade during violent the break-up of Yugoslavia and afterwards in Moscow where he witnessed how Vladimir Putin came to power. Frank is currently a full-time writer of literary non-fiction books, among which are Engineers of the Soul (2002), Ararat (2007), Brother Mendel’s Perfect Horse (2011), Choke Valley (2013), We Hominids (2018) and The Cosmic Comedy (2021). With over sixty translations in fifteen languages his work is reaching an international audience.
Other activities involving the participant:
Bridges between cultures: diplomatic writers, writers diplomats
Claudia Neira Bermúdez
(1975). Directora del Festival Centroamérica Cuenta desde 2015, donde también coordina la curaduría de contenidos. Combina su labor de gestión cultural con su experiencia en comunicación estratégica y relaciones públicas.
Previamente, trabajó como editora en medios de comunicación en Nicaragua, como experta de comunicación en Estados Unidos y Nicaragua donde fundó en 2005 Crea Comunicaciones. Posee un Master en comunicación estratégica y Relaciones Públicas en la Universidad de Marshall, West Virginia, Estados Unidos. Es fellow de la V clase de la Iniciativa de Liderazgo Centroamericana (CALI, por sus siglas en inglés, asociada al Aspen Institute). Ha sido mentora en Voces Vitales y formado parte de diversas iniciativas culturales, empresariales y de liderazgo en Centroamérica.
Nicaragüense nacida en Brasil de padre peruano y madre nicaragüense. Desde el 2022, reside en Madrid.
Other activities involving the participant:
The Pleasure of Reading Galas
Latin America Viva
Tuesday November 28
17:00 to 17:50
Salón 1, planta baja, Expo Guadalajara