This part of our newsletter, dear reader, is special, or at least stands out from the others, because it is not intended to be a simple guide, but something like a handheld program.
The work whose hand program is this edition of American Letters and which opens in three days is the Guadalajara International Book Fair, the most important festival of literature and books in our language, and whose guest of honor in this edition is the European Union.
Although the reason was not that this year’s edition of the Mass – in which we witness conflicts and wars that, although they are taking place at the moment you are reading these words, have been ripped out of the 20th century for hundreds of years It seems that thousands of civilians are being run over, disappearing, being killed and being devastated, regardless of their age or gender and even in hospitals, in a completely unpunished and criminal manner – do you have the last project you aspired to as a guest of honor – that’s what I say Regardless of whether it is a success or a failure, the dissolution of national borders is no small matter.
Conflicts and the FIL of Guadalajara 2023
Based on what I’ve just written, this hand program highlights the actors and literary scripts I want to focus on – always, as it happens in this space, what that spotlight illuminates is solely a consequence of a subjectivity, a particular taste and a very personal way of understanding literature – I dare to recommend to everyone who will attend the fair and to those who want to experience it remotely, from any location, via streaming the fair, the following events, which I consider fundamental for understanding new aspects of our present due to their theme and their participants – all writers.
And at the Guadalajara Fair, the fair of fairs that includes many other fairs, readers can take part in the “Writers for Democracy and Civil Rights” table, which will be attended by the Hungarian writer and thinker Zsuzsanna Szelényi and the Bulgarian writer, translator and Editor Ilija Trojanow; to the conference “How to Write and Read in Violent Times”, which will be attended by the Cypriot writer and journalist Stavros Chistoloulou, the Ukrainian writer Haska Shyyan, the Dutch artist, writer and composer Eva Meijer and the French writer and translator Neige Sinno, the has lived in Mexico for almost two decades; to the conversation “Words as an instrument of tolerance and openness”, in which the Portuguese writer and playwright Lídia Jorge, the Croatian writer Olja Savicevic, the Jordanian-born Maltese writer and biomedical scientist and of Palestinian origin Walid Babhan and the Belgian writer, playwright and actor took part Angelo Tijssens, and at the table “How to write and read from the margins” where the Moldovan writer and journalist Tatiana Tibuleac, the Turkish Cypriot poet Zeki Ali, the Irish writer and screenwriter Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin, who writes in Irish , and the Spanish writer and poet Berta Dávila, who writes in Galician.
Subjective, special and very personal guide
At the FIL of Guadalajara in 2023, a fair where, as I have said many times, there is space, events, books and authors for all readers, without distinction of tastes, preferences, interests and affinities, just like in theirs With the previous editions it will be easy to get lost, because when you enter this one you enter a disproportionate and often insane space. To help the readers of American Letters who will attend – and also so that those who cannot attend can write some names or titles in their journals – here is my subjective guide, specific and very personal, which is nothing more is as a basic plan for approaching certain books, or, as I said at the beginning of this episode, a mere manual program for this work in which thousands of readers, hundreds of writers and editors, dozens of journalists take part every year A dozen actors, a handful of YouTubers who want to be writers, and the odd lost, anxious or depressed politician. Of course, as I have said on other occasions, this guide – which ignores the books and authors to which a previous edition of our newsletter has already been dedicated and only considers books that come from Latin America – is intended to be nothing more than a starting point .
Depending on your taste. Nothing is more personal than each individual’s taste. And this time I recommend a book from the Guatemalan publishing house Sophos, a project that grew out of the bookstore of the same name – which, by the way, just celebrated its fifteenth birthday. The book by Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez that I would like to recommend is entitled “Someone will dance with our mummies” and is a compilation of three short novels that could also be three long stories in which language is one of the main protagonists and in in which language is one of the main actors. Other protagonists, the characters, are always traveling through some gorge: The Ice Age, That’s what friends are for and Everything you don’t know. The work of Gálvez Suárez is a compendium of emotions and insights that never ceases to surprise the reader, page after page, as it is also a Pantone of the gray tones of the soul.
Depending on your preferences. Less personal than taste, but just as intense, my preferences lead me to recommend that readers of this newsletter look for the following independent Latin American publishers, which will undoubtedly be interesting and whose books are not easy to find in bookstores in Mexico – like it they will not exist in countries that are not their countries of origin, but precisely for this reason it is important to keep an eye on them and to look for them in the other fairs so similar to the FIL in Guadalajara: the Chilean Montacerdos, Overoll and Cuneta; the Costa Rican Los tres publishers and Encino editions; the Uruguayan creature and the fish in the ice; the Bolivian Dum Dum and Mantis, the Argentinian Chai Editora, Leteo, Sigilo and Ediciones Godot, and the Colombian Himpar Ediciones and Laguna Libros.
Depending on your interest. As happened to me exactly a year ago, I am convinced that one of the most interesting events of this FIL, which is just beginning, will be the presentation of another book by El Colegio Nacional (co-edited with several institutions and available in several countries) . Countries in our region), in this case: Talking and Living in America, by the Concepción Company Company, accompanied by Mariana Hernández and the book’s editor, Alejandro Cruz. Speaking and living in America is a kind of history of language – and what a language says and tells about its speakers – that many of us who live between Tierra del Fuego and Tijuana use (though we might well say between Tierra del Fuego and Tijuana). ). Fire and Chicago for example).
By affinities. As I have said on other occasions, although it may seem less personal, in reality it is something more important and profound, since it is a dialogue on several levels, which is why this time I would like to recommend it to the participants It is fair , that you don’t leave without getting a copy of “Una Música” by the Argentinian Hernán Ronsino, published by Sexto Piso, a publisher that also reissues “The Difficult Light” by the Colombian Tomás González – an author I never tire of will be recommended because he is undoubtedly one of the greatest prose writers in our language – and since we are between notes and keys, with a copy of “A Pianist from the Provinces” by the Uruguayan writer Ramiro Sanchíz, a novel published by Random House.
Depending on emotions and hesitations. For a die-hard reader, there is hardly anything more exciting than discovering an author and thus finding a first book whose publication can and should be celebrated. For this reason, I would like to recommend here the search and reading of the story books “I wish they imagined me without a head” by the Chilean María José Bilbao – published by Montacerdos – and “Natural Disasters” by the Uruguayan Tamara Silva Bernaschea, which I will talk about in Also covered briefly in this newsletter published by Criatura, as well as the novels Todo pueblo es scar by the Mexican Hiram Ruvalcaba, who had previously only published short stories – it is in the Random House edition – and El Vasto territorial, by the Chilean Simón López Trujillo – published by Caja Negra –.
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