Macondo: Special Guest Nation At This Year’s “FILBo,” Colombia’s International Book Fair

This year’s guest nation at Colombia’s “Féria Internacionál del Libro” will be Macondo, the fictional country imagined by the late “Gabo,” Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the Colombian author who was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. A 3,000 square-meter pavilion honoring the author will recreate the feel and ambiance of the fictional land that Marquez wrote about over his prolific lifespan as an author, when the book fair opens from April 21 until May 4 in Corferias, Bogotá’s flagship convention center.

This year’s convention will feature several programs, including FILBo Gourmet, with various internationally renowned chefs such as Mexico’s José Ramón Castillo, Argentina’s Juliana López May, and Colombia’s own Leonor Espinoza demonstrating recipes from their cookbooks. FILBO en Familia, on the weekends, will host family-friendly events geared towards getting children into literature and families to read together. Recitals, concerts, and workshops are included on the agenda.

The book fair roughly coincides with the first anniversary of the death of Garcia Marquez, the 17^th of April last year, and will be accompanied by academic programs including experts in Gabo’s writing such as Fan Ye, who translated the author’s works into Mandarin, biographers Dasso Saldivar and Gerald Martin, from the University of Texas in Austin, and several editors.

Above photo: Dr. Enrique González Villa – President of Cámara Colombiana del Libro speaking at the 2015 FILBo Thought Leaders Luncheon

This year’s expert committee in charge of the academic and cultural programming of FILBo 2015 consists of Guiomar Acevedo and Consuelo Gaitán, of the Colombian Ministry of Culture; Valentín Ortíz and Victor Manuel Rodriguez, from Bogotá’s office of Culture, Recreation and Sport; and Diana Rey and Adriana Martinez from the Cámara Colombiana del Libro, Colombia’s literature promotion organization.

Integral to this year’s book fair will be the VII Encuentro Internacional de Periodismo, or journalist’s meeting, that will host various journalists and specialists to discuss Gabo’s early work as a journalist, leading him to quip once, “Even though they suffer like dogs, there is no better avocation than journalism.”

The event also will feature and recognize female authors from around the world, including writers from as far away as Ukraine, Spain, and Iran.