Book Fair Excursion

In the form of art installations, Spain has shown visitors the diversity of cultures and languages that make up its identity. New technologies were also used. In a sea of words, literary quotations, editorial references and definitions, the audience was shown the reality of Spain's linguistic diversity. Machines produced Braille or handwriting, or used colors to reflect the sentences that visitors spoke into a microphone in different languages. Translation in the truest sense of the word. "Creatividad Desbordante", or "Sparkling Creativity", could be experienced everywhere.

The following publishing houses were visited: Agullo-Verlag, which has made a name for itself in the field of crime novels in just a few years. Jeanne Guyon from the Verticales publishing house (Gallimard) explained the publishing line to us and presented the various book profiles (marginal novels, imaginary archives, collections of writings on the walls...). We talked at length about the meticulous text work in intensive dialog with the author: some manuscripts are rewritten for almost two years! Barbara-Sophia Voglmaier took us through the special features of her profession, the qualities needed to arouse interest in a book or to make it stand out in a bookshop: Here we learned a lot about the concrete aspects of selling books. The publishing groups Sial Pigmalión and Web del Album from Spain and Ediciones del Lirio from Mexico offered interesting discussions and showed interest in collaborating with the University of Kassel.

The challenge of the largest book fair in the world is its size. It can hardly be managed in a single day: Panel discussions, readings, interviews and always new publishers to discover. The semester couldn't have started any better