More than 1,900 publishers from 42 countries, and 800 authors from 37 countries, will descend on the city at the end of November to thrill and motivate around 700,000 reading enthusiasts who each year religiously show up at Guadalajara’s mammoth International Book Fair (FIL), the second-largest literary event of its kind in the world.
India is the guest of honor at this year’s 33rd annual fair, which runs November 30 to December 8 at Expo Guadalajara. The theme, “Let our lives be open books,” is a saying by Mahatma Ghandi.
India has confirmed that 35 writers will attend the ten-day fair. They include many well-known names in the literary industry: Advaita Kala, C. S. Lakshmi, Amish Tripathi, Anushka Ravishankar and Rangnath Gabaji Pathare, among them. Presentations of Indian dance and music will take place on each evening of the fair, and exhibitions featuring Indian art and culture are planned at the Museo Regional de Guadalajara, Instituto Cultural Cabañas and Museo de las Artes.
In other high-profile events, the Salon de Poesia (Poetry Salon) will be opened by Vijay Seshadri, an Indian-born, U.S. poet, essayist and literary critic who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for “3 Sections.”
Mexican poet, essayist and translator David Huerta will receive this year’s prestigious Romance Languages Award (worth $US150,000). He will be presented with the honor from Silvia Lemus, the widow of Mexican Nobel Prize for Literature winner Octavio Paz, on the event’s opening day.
Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.