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 The winning author, who must write in Spanish and have at least ten unpublished poems or poems published in the last five years that are related to nature, urban sustainability, socio-ecological harmony and environmental conservation, will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
Axolotl, traces of the little water monster in literature
FIL Science
Axolotl, traces of the little water monster in literature
There are very few creatures that have so profoundly disrupted the inhabitants of the center of the territory now called Mexico, as the formidable Axolotl has done. A small swamp monster, with nocturnal and completely aquatic habits, who dominates the secrets of eternal youth, and who has the power of extreme morphological regeneration. Let's say that not for nothing did the Aztecs consider him as the reincarnation of a god. But the emblematic amphibian not only sneaked into Mexica mythology, but later would go on to populate naturalist treatises with its enigmatic life cycle, it would be literary muse of Cortázar, Salvador Elizondo, José Emilio Pacheco, among other great authors, it would be forged as a metaphor of Mexicanness for anthropologists and as a symbol of extinction for biologists, and it would even be stamped on our currency, the already iconic 50 peso bill. Today, on the verge of its disappearance in the wild, we have one last chance to maybe turn his figure into a sign of conservation, and that largely depends on the literature and a possible new conception about ourselves and the place we occupy in the world.
Participant: Andrés Cota Hiriart
Andrés Cota Hiriart
He is a zoologist, writer and science communicator. He studied biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a master's degree in a scientific documentary at the Imperial College London. He is the author of the books Fieras familiares (finalist I Libros del Asteroide Nonfiction Prize, 2022), El ajolote (Elefanta 3ed., 2024), Faunologías (Festina 2ed., 2024), Cabeza ajena (Moho, 2017) and from the children's book Madam Cuc, la dueña del paraíso (Elefanta, 2023). His texts are found in anthologies and media such as Revista de la Universidad, Gatopardo, Vice, Nexos, Letras Libres, Este_País, Wiered, among others. He has been a member of the National System of Art Creators (2018-2021), a speaker at TEDx and is the founder of the Society of Anonymous Scientists. He is currently the host of the podcast Masaje cerebral; he is a professor of literature at the Higher School of Cinema, and conducts the program Revista de la Universidad, on TV UNAM.
Other activities involving the participant:
The "other people": animals and nature in literature
Panel 4: The Communication of Science
Psychedelic biology. Secret colors of nature
Kamazootra, the most extravagant modes of reproduction in the animal kingdom
Organiza: FIL Guadalajara