Filbo International Book Fair (Feria Internacional del Libro de Bogotá)

The Colombian capital is preparing for the thirty-seventh edition of the Bogotá International Book Fair (FILBo), whose 2025 edition will be held from April 25 to May 11. This event, organized by Corferias and the Colombian Book Chamber (CCL), transcends borders to become a space for reflection, conversation, memory, meeting, and publishing business. In addition, this year will have as its conceptual axis a theme as universal as it is intimate: The words of the body.

In this way, the FILBo invites us to think of the body not only as biological matter but as a symbolic space where identity, memory, and resistance converge. For this reason, the Fair’s programming will explore corporeality from literature, science, art, philosophy, and politics. Thus, visitors will be able to approach this theme from various perspectives, such as the female experience, sexual diversity, disability, violence, equity, thought, time, migration, and pleasure, among others.

In this regard, Adriana Ángel Forero, director of the Fair on behalf of the CCL, says that: “the body is the first territory we inhabit, but we rarely stop to explore it in its complexity. At FILBo 2025, we want literature to help us understand it beyond the biological: as a space of memory, identity, and resistance. From science to poetry, the body is the meeting point of our emotions, experiences, and social transformations. In times when questions about our materiality are more urgent than ever, the FILBo will be the stage to reflect on what it means to exist, feel, and share from the body and the word.”

For her part, Catalina Chávez, director of the FILBo on behalf of Corferias, says: “We are proud of the theme of the FILBo this year and we are excited about the arrival of Spain as the guest of honor, as it promises a journey through centuries of literature, thought and culture, in an enriching dialogue with Colombia. This will be a unique opportunity for writers and readers to explore together the connections that unite us at Corferias, a unique place that is an icon of the movement and growth of the publishing industry every year.”

Filbo 2025

First authors announced

The FILBo 2025 will feature the participation of literary figures of national and international stature, such as the renowned writer Laura Restrepo (Colombia), who has masterfully narrated the darkest and brightest corners of the human experience; Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (Puerto Rico), outstanding novelist and essayist for her works on migration and feminism in the Caribbean.

There will also be the Argentinean Andrés Neuman, poet, narrator and translator, winner of the Alfaguara Prize; from South Korea will come Kim Un-su, author of The Planners, a literary thriller of the Korean crime novel, translated into multiple languages and adapted to the cinema.

Also present will be Arianna de Sousa-García (Venezuela), writer of Atrás queda la tierra, her first narrative work, which is a moving non-fiction novel about the Venezuelan diaspora, the pain caused by dispossession and violence.

Fritz Breithaupt will arrive from Germany with his essay The Narrative Brain explores the impact of stories on society; María Cecilia Barbetta (German-Argentine), winner of several awards in Germany, including the Alfred Döblin scholarship, the Aspekte-Literaturpreis prize, the Chamisso/Hellerau prize; also from the Old Continent the Swiss writer and translator Dorothée Elmiger, Swiss Prize for Literature, will participate.

Connecting visitors with the Caribbean, the Fair will have Frank Báez (Dominican Republic), poet and narrator, creator of the spoken word collective “El Hombrecito”. Traveling to the south of the continent, the Uruguayan Mabel Moraña will talk about corporeality and desire, themes that she has worked on in books such as Pensar el cuerpo. Currently, she is director of the Latin American Studies Program at Washington University in Saint Louis where she teaches courses on viceregal studies to the present day, focusing on the baroque, nationalism and modernity.

And in the Children’s and Young People’s Literature slot, the Bogota International Book Fair will have authors such as: Elise Kova (USA), outstanding because its narrative escapes the usual sensuality, focusing on the emotional growth of its characters and who wrote the bestseller A Duel with the Lord of the Vampires; Susanna Mattiangeli (Italy), 2018 Andersen Award for Best Writer of the Year, the most prestigious literary award in Italy, creator of Crescendo, the story of Milo, a deaf boy, in a village without music and how he discovers it when it returns to his village; Maikel Rodríguez (Cuba), outstanding writer of children’s and young people’s literature, multi-awarded for his horror works, Romance de la Niña Mala Award for his literary career; and Luis Pescetti (Argentina) Latin Grammy for Best Children’s Music Album, ALIJA Award (IBBY Argentina) and Caniem Award for his book Cartas al Rey de la cabina. He will present at FILBo his book, Emotional First Aid Kit for Humans and Superheroes: The Right to Know That We Are Not What We Feel.

Spain, a literary bridge

This year, Spain will be the guest of honor and will arrive with the proposal ‘A culture for peace, with others and with the planet’, the slogan of the program organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Spain and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E). Thus, the Iberian nation responds to the invitation of the Fair with another invitation: to generate a meeting space that has books at its center, a place of knowledge and imagination, an agora for dialogue about the issues that concern citizens today.

In this regard, Antonio Monegal, National Essay Prize 2023, curator appointed by Spain, through its Ministry of Culture and AC/E, for participation in the FILBo 2025, comments that: “it is not a conversation only between Colombia and Spain but between all the countries that share common languages, literary traditions, cultural spaces and history. As in any conversation, each one contributes their experiences, their imaginaries, their memory, from different perspectives of each country. In this dialogue, books are our allies and friends, but they are also indispensable instruments of change. They help us to face the problems of the world, to understand what is happening, to get closer to the experience of others, to learn empathy, to imagine solutions.”

Monegal adds: “Books are also the repositories of memory: they invite us to look back to look to the future. Peace is not reduced to the absence of war, to a truce between violence. Peace is also a desire for understanding, a willingness to negotiate differences and disagreements, a horizon of aspiration to coexistence and a commitment to care for the natural environment that we share.”

Some of the writers with a great impact on narrative, poetry, and essays that Spain will bring, reflecting the diversity that characterizes its current literature, are: Marta Sanz (Madrid), Herralde Novel Prize winner and finalist for the Nadal Prize, whose work investigates memory and identity with incisive prose. Clara Usón (Barcelona), author of La hija del Este, winner of the National Critics’ Prize; her most recent novel, Las fieras, explores a generation marked by violence and political conflict. Francesc Serés (Zaidín, Huesca), Aragonese writer in Catalan, winner of the National Prize for Literature of Catalonia; Ismael Ramos (Mazaricos, La Coruña), one of the emerging voices of Spanish poetry due to the power of his reflections on identity and language; and Leire Bilbao (Ondárroa, Vizcaya), a poet in Basque, whose work rescues Basque orality with a contemporary look.

A platform to connect businesses and industry experts

The Fair reaffirms its role as the epicenter of the publishing business in Latin America during the first half of the year, with the Professional Conferences that include key spaces to strengthen the book industry. In terms of business, there is the International Business Show, the FellowShip Program, and the Librarians’ Mission, which, together with 12 specialized conferences aimed at all the actors in the book chain, make the FILBo the central stage of the industry in the first half of the year.

One of these spaces is the International Business Show, a strategic meeting where publishers, literary agents, and distributors from all over the world will meet to finalize agreements for the purchase and sale of books, as well as publishing and translation rights, promoting the circulation of content at a global level. This commitment energizes the publishing market, facilitating strategic connections and new commercial opportunities for professionals in the sector.

In addition, the Fair will offer two scenarios designed to expand access to Colombian literature, such as the Fellowship Program, which invites seven international literary agents interested in enriching their catalogs with national editorial production.

They are Rory Williamson (United Kingdom), editor at Pushkin Press, where he publishes fiction and non-fiction; Baha Sonmez (Turkey), general manager of Redhouse and board member of the Turkish Publishers Association; Majid Jafari Aghdam (Iran), CEO of Pol Yainci, combines his experience as an editor, translator, writer and poet; Niyazi Khidirov (Azerbaijan), international rights manager at Libra Kitab, a publisher specializing in children’s literature; Massimiliano Bonatto (Italy), editor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Polidoro; Corinna Santa Cruz (Germany), editor at Buechergilde Gutenberg and specialist in Latin American and Spanish literature; and Benjamin Burguete (France), art historian and philosopher in Paris.

And the Librarians’ Mission, which will allow librarians from various regions to strengthen their collections through specialized advice and purchasing spaces, ensuring that more readers have access to a diverse and up-to-date offer.

Within the specialized Conferences are the Book Forums, which allow the exchange of ideas and experiences between the actors of the publishing world. This year, the Book Forums Master Classes will also be strengthened, an initiative that was born in 2024 and has been vital in offering practical learning to professionals in the sector. And for librarians, the Fair has the International Meeting of Librarians, an event designed to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the management and promotion of reading, strengthening their role as essential mediators between books and the community.

In addition to this, the International Meeting of Booksellers will be held again so that these important actors in the book chain can share strategies and challenges of the sector. For its part, the Books for Children and Young People Meeting will bring together publishers specialized in children’s and young people’s literature to discuss trends and opportunities. Also, translation and illustration will have their space with the Forum of Literary and Editorial Translation, the Forum of Comic Professionals, FILBo Ilustra-Ilustropía and the long-awaited portfolio review, where Colombian illustrators will be able to present their work to publishers.

The FILBo will be a meeting point for industry leaders with the Book Fairs Network Meeting, the National Meeting of Proofreaders and FILBo Emprende, which will promote publishing ventures with training and commercial exhibition. The International Copyright Seminar will open a key space for debate on the protection of works, while the FILBo Ilustra Master Classes will bring the best artists closer to the community. Finally, the BAM Film Adaptations of Literary Works will bring together publishers and filmmakers to explore the potential of books on the big screen.