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Cuba Book Fair: Fiesta of Sensibility and Intelligence

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Cuba’s 16th International Book Fair was inaugurated Thursday and opens to the public starting Friday at the Morro Cabana Fortress turned cultural center complex overlooking the Havana Bay and the capital city.

By Pedro de la Hoz - pedro.hg@granma.cip.cu -

Cuba’s 16th International Book Fair was officially inaugurated at the Morro Cabana Fortress, with a ceremony late in the afternoon to welcome Argentina, the guest of honor, and to pay tribute to Cuban poet, narrator and essayist Cesar Lopez, and historian Eduardo Torres Cuevas, recipients of the 2006 National Literary Award.

The opening precedes ten days of book launchings, meetings with authors, book sales, poetry and literature recitals, concerts, and exhibits at the Fortress, located at the mouth of the Havana Bay.

On Friday, the fairgrounds will be opened to the public through February 18, when the event moves to 39 other cities across the country before concluding in Santiago de Cuba on March 11.

Argentina will be represented by a large delegation of publishing houses, writers, artists and government officials, among them the country’s mnister of Culture, Jose Nun, and the governor of Santa Fe Province, Jorge Obeid.

David Vina, Noe Jitrik, Luisa Valenzuela, Graciela Duffau, Horacio Gonzalez, Lilia Ferreira, Víctor Ego Ducrot and Juan Carlos Baglietto are among the Argentinean scholars and artists who are eparticipating at the fair.

As a special gift, Argentina will distribute 250,000 copies of an anthology
that includes renowned Argentine authors such as Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Abelardo Castillo, Carlos Gorostiza and María Elena Walsh.

Maria Mederos, who heads the Cuban Book Chamber, told the press that 82 foreign exhibitors are attending the fair, representing 550 publishing houses. The largest stands correspond to Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Germany and Cuba with 53 publishing houses.

As is every year, one of the main attractions is the children's pavilion, with an extensive cultural program of arts, entertainment and literature.

This year the fair will also include a second-hand bookstore with more than 7,000 titles.

Local Writers on the Spotlight

This year's Cuban Book Fair offers a wide spectrum of local authors, from the novelist who lives and works in Havana and the small rural town poet to the researcher delving into the great cultural traditions of eastern Cuba.

In 1999, President Fidel Castro raised the idea of promoting a national publishing system to help support authors living outside of the Havana-centered publishing network. Since then, provincial publishing houses have been established leading to a flourish of publications island-wide.

"Fidel dreams realities," said a sugar mill worker from a small town in the
province of Holguin, whose first book of poetry will be offered at the book fair.

Fernando Leon Jacomino, vice president of the Cuban Book Institute, said that a positive result could be seen in the more than 2,000 authors that have been published as part of this new system. He was quick to add, however, that works are not selected to fulfill a quota system but rather based on quality. Works from established writers and the search for "new authors, independent of where they live -are the initial and principal motivation for the project."

Jacomino added that promotion is another important aspect of the project to make certain that titles are more available and visible to the public. Part
of this responsibility is making sure that authors' works are widely available in municipal libraries throughout the island and are on sale at subsidized prices in the capital city libraries of each province, he added.

The much awaited annual book fair comes at a time when efforts to
revolutionize the panorama of Cuban literature are starting to come to
fruition, clearly visible in the prominent role of Cuban author's at this
year's festival.

http://www.periodico26.cu/english/culture/fair020807.htm
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