Filbo 2023: These are the first international guests

The Bogotá International Book Fair celebrates its thirty-fifth edition in 2023, and to warm up the engines and provoke Colombian readers, on March 2 it unveiled its official image and the first international guests who, from April 18 to May 2, they will visit the pavilions of the Corferias to celebrate literature, in nearly 1,600 activities and with more than 500 exhibitors. For this year, the guest country of honor is Mexico.

The main theme of FILBo 2023 is Domain, to celebrate the three roots of Colombian culture –indigenous, Spanish and African–; as a medium for having urgent conversations about sustainability, the environment, gender and peace; and as a foundation, to speak of the roots and the uprooting of people who migrate.

The protagonist of the official image of the fair is its distinctive reader who seeks to evoke the art of poster design, a graphic technique that refers to the basic expression of a print and its versatility, which lets you play around and move different elements around to get what you want, just like it happens in the process of a writer, who organizes the letters as he pleases to arrive at his final work.

The first guests announced

Among the first announced for the 35th edition of FILBo are the Argentine writer and science communicator Paula Bombara; the brazilian university Djamila Ribeiro, one of the most influential voices of Latin American feminism; the illustrator from Ecuador Roger Ycaza; and the Spaniards Carmen Posadas, novelist, whose work has been translated into 23 languages; and the famous Spanish scientific publicist Javier Santaolalla.

Among the Mexican guests will visit the FILBo Antonio Malpicaone of the most important authors of literature for children and adolescents in Latin America; Karina Sosawinner of the 2021 Amazon First Novel Award and Bernardo Esquinca, the great professor of horror literature in Mexico. The speaker and motivator will also be from Mexico Daniel Habifjournalist and women’s rights advocate Lydia Cacho and award-winning novelist and essayist Jorge Volpi.

To this first announcement are added Benjamin Alire Saenzof the United States, winner of the Tomás Rivera Children’s Literature Prize and the southwestern books; the italian essayist Order Nucciorenowned specialist in Renaissance art, history and culture; and Micaela Chirifwho was born in Peru and writes poetry for boys and girls.

In 2023, FILBo will offer 14 professional conferences, between April 19 and 29, during which seminars, conferences, congresses and the International Business Fair will be held. There, some of the central topics will be editorial entrepreneurship, editorial translation, copyright and illustration. Among the guests are Juan Casamayor, of the Spanish publishing house Páginas de espuma; Andrea Monejo of Ident Literary Agency and Sander Schwartz of Sandman Television and Film Inc., USA.

Mexico, guest of honor

Mexico’s presence at FILBo 2023 is organized by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and the Ministry of Culture of Mexico. In a pavilion of 3,000 m2, the guest of honor country will have a bookstore with almost 30,000 copies, presentations and interviews with authors, artistic exhibitions, musical performances, gastronomic samples and a delegation of more of 100 people linked to Mexican culture, who They will participate in more than 80 events.

Mexico’s motto is “Roots and encounters: for a future of peace for our America” ​​and its activities will revolve around the commemoration of four fundamental milestones in the country’s history: the bicentenary of the signing of the Treaty of , the League and Perpetual Confederation between Mexico and Colombia; the hundred years of Mexican muralism; the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the Economic Culture Fund; and the hundred years of the death of Pancho Villa, revolutionary hero.