Daniel Divinsky

My name is Daniel Jorge Divinsky, I was born in Buenos Aires on April 1, 1942 but, due to a clerical error, I was registered two days later, which saved me (not entirely) from being an April's Fool.
I completed my primary, secondary and university studies in state and free institutions, until I graduated as a lawyer in 1962 -too young-. I was awarded the Diploma of Honor of that promotion, but I refused to receive it during one of the endemic military dictatorships of our country; I got it later, during one of the periods of democratic restoration.
Two aunts -my father's sisters, teachers- taught me to read when I was six years old, and I had to stop attending elementary school, which had just begun, because of acute nephritis. That's why I made it to first grade by reading in a row, something I haven't stopped doing until last night.
During my law school studies, I was assistant editor and then editor of a collection of small books published by the Student Center. They were texts written by professors of the career, about topics on which they usually questioned in the exams. That was my first contact with linotype, the smell of molten lead and the correction of "galley proofs". Later, when a bookseller friend of mine, Jorge Alvarez, opened his publishing house, I was one of his ad honorem collaborators for the publication of several books.
Dissatisfied with the practice of law, I enrolled in a course for sociology graduates taught in the department of sociology, inaugurated shortly before at the University of Buenos Aires. I studied several subjects with great interest, until the military coup of 1966 violently intervened the University, and the professors with whom I studied resigned or were dismissed.
Without horizons, with my partner in the law firm we then decided to open a bookstore, but the meager funds we had were not even enough to pay the entrance fee for the rent of a suitable location. At Alvarez's suggestion, we partnered with him and in 1966 Ediciones de la Flor was born, the house I directed until September 2015. Initially, we published an exquisite catalog of low-circulation books until, in 1970, Quino, the author of Mafalda, who was a friend of ours, proposed that we publish his strips of the character because he had broken off relations with his first publisher - the aforementioned Álvarez - who had stopped paying him his royalties on time.
With the appearance of Volume 6 of Mafalda in October 1970, he completely changed the perspective of the publishing house, which allowed me to leave behind my law career in 1973. The publishing house had changes in its corporate composition with the retirement of my lawyer partner and the incorporation of Kuki Miler, an economist by profession and my partner at that time. 
The financial liquidity provided by publishing the initial 200,000 copies of each volume of Mafalda allowed us to diversify the catalog and bet on multiple authors, with diverse results. At some point the books of the brilliant and audacious journalist Rodolfo Walsh, later kidnapped and murdered by the dictatorship of 1976/1983, were incorporated. We publish, both his research writings (the famous Operación Masacre) and his short story compilations.
Other notable names in the catalogue: Umberto Eco, first with a children's story and then with The Name of the Rose and other of his important titles in co-edition with Lumen of Spain. And Georges Brassens, Tennessee Williams, John Berger, in a list of almost a thousand titles.
In 1977, the implacable civil-military-ecclesiastical dictatorship that had taken over the country and tortured, killed and disappeared thousands of people, banned a children's book from the imprint and reacted to my appeal by imprisoning my wife and me for 127 days, without any form of trial or possibility of defense. When we were released, we went into exile in Venezuela, while the publishing house continued to operate, expertly and prudently managed by my partner's mother.
When I returned to the country on the eve of the restoration of democracy, the government of President Alfonsín offered me to direct a State radio station –Radio Belgrano–; together with my team, we made an effort to democratize communication.
In September 2015 I retired from the publishing house, which was left in charge of my ex-partner, and currently I do a weekly radio program on the radio station of the University of Buenos Aires and write a biweekly column for the digital publication "Leamos", obviously, about books.
We were awarded the Arnaldo Orfila Reynal Prize for publishing career, granted by the FIL Guadalajara; a distinction from the University of Buenos Aires to notable alumni; I was declared Outstanding Personality of Culture by the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires, and received a few more medals.
I am addicted to book fairs and attend as many as I can, even when I am retired from publishing.
 

Other activities involving the participant:

Inauguration of Salón del Cómic + Novela Gráfica, Tribute to Quino

Benito Taibo

(Ciudad de México, 1960) 

Es escritor, periodista y entusiasta promotor de la lectura entre los jóvenes. Comenzó su camino en la literatura como poeta con Siete primeros poemas (1976), Vivos y suicidas (1978), Recetas para el desastre (1987) y De la función social de las gitanas (2002). Ha publicado en Planeta sus novelas Polvo (2010), Persona normal (2011), Querido Escorpión (2013), Desde mi muro (2014), Cómplices (2015), Corazonadas (2016) y la trilogía Mundo sin Dioses: Camino a Sognum (2018), La razón y la ira (2019) y Caos y destino (2020). Su libro más reciente es Pasar inadvertido (Seix Barral, 2022), que recopila algunos de sus mejores poemas. Su obra es un referente ineludible en el panorama literario contemporáneo.  

Other activities involving the participant:

The Pleasure of Reading Galas