The Book Fair, which should have happened this February, has been suspended, the online event “March Literary” is organized, which aims to cover something of its lack and is done at the initiative of some promoters, authors and journalists, with the support of some institutions, such as Casa de las Américas Editorial Fund, the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Center and the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana.
The event will take place from March 19 to 25, 2021 in Facebook, Telegram, Ivoox and YouTube. “The issue, after the vacuum caused by the absence of the Book Fair in 2021, was that readers, authors, and publishers and promoters of literature would not be” orphaned “of events and spaces to demonstrate,” he said. Rafael Grillo, Editor-in-Chief of The Bearded Cayman, one of the entities promoting the event, to the official newspaper Rebellious youth.
The initiative wants to take over the networks and promote other forms of dissemination of authors and books that favor the digital world. It comes at a time of special crisis for the national publishing industry, which for two years has hardly published a printed book by a Cuban or foreign author due to the succession of financial difficulties in which the country finds itself.
Literary March proposes book´s trailers, readings, presentations, conferences and debates. There will be workshops that discuss literary promotion in cyberspace, new book formats, other ways to take on the publishing business and children’s literature. Roy Ávalos and Alex Díaz from Oralitura Habana will give lessons on the oral and written tenth, and “author projects” such as Isliada, La Estantería Cubana, Claustrophobia Promociones Literarias, La Jeringa, La Tertulia Library of Havana, the Callejas Project, Discurso de Eva, El Zumbido, Open Space, Axiom, Vortex, Manifesto and Dawn in Santa Clara will be present.
Magazine We are young, enthusiastically, she dedicates this hyperbole to him “Literary March: Who Said There Was No Fair?” Obviously it will not be so bad. Even if it were a strict Book Fair, it wouldn’t be that much either. La Feria has been declining in literature for years while increasing in gastronomy, the authors go into exile or go into exile, foreign publishing houses are embarrassed by the thefts or by the absence of a market and the controversy is generally absent from their offer (they have sought so much censorship that it is hardly questioned anymore , and if it is done, it is not noticeable).
However, Literary March could bring some life to the institutions’ national literary exhibition. Not because of what they say – the illusion of a new promotional medium – but because by occupying the democratic networks, what there is, the real institutional literary state, will be more exposed and open to criticism. On the other hand, interaction with the public will be more free and immediate, by taking advantage of new technologies, such as in Telegram chat which already opens the event. The Book Fair used to be a distant impoverishment. This online event can be a dialogue decadence, and that gives hope.
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