First launched in 2019, the New York City International Book Fair / Feria Internacional del Libro NYC, an initiative of the CUNY Mexican Studies Institute, aims to disseminate academic and literary work published in Spanish, whether in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, or the United States, and, at the same time, promote better reading habits within Hispanic communities in New York.

 

This year’s virtual panels and events, which take place from Oct. 1 to Oct. 3 will be streamed on Facebook Live through the @FILNYC account. Last year, the event brought together scholars and authors from more than a dozen countries, with over 48,000 people attending the virtual conferences, panels, and workshops.

 

The schedule includes the following event highlights. Call (347) 577 4080 for more information. To watch past events, click here, for example.

 

Conversation with Cristina Rivera-Garza
Friday, Oct. 1
1:15 p.m. (EST)

Marco Ramírez Rojas, an assistant Spanish professor at Lehman, will moderate a talk with Rivera-Garza, a prolific and award-winning Mexican writer. Rivera-Garza is the author of six novels, three short story collections, five poetry collections, and three non-fiction books. Originally penned in Spanish, her work has been translated into several languages, including English, Portuguese, and Korean.

 

How The New York Times Reports to Diverse Audiences
Saturday, Oct. 2
10:00 a.m. (EST)

The New York Times is the third-most read newspaper in the United States. In this panel, four Spanish speaking journalists —Elda Cantú, Annie Correal, Andrés R. Martínez and José Enrique Arrioja — discuss the challenges faced and the strategies followed by NYT to reach out to an increasingly diverse audience, both in the United States and abroad.

 

Racism and Marginalization
Saturday, Oct. 2
12:00 p.m. (EST)

Araceli Tinajero teaches at the Graduate Center (Hispanic Literatures) and is the co-founder of the Mexico Study Group at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies where she has been a fellow for more than a decade. In this panel, voices from Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Spain will dialogue on the role that racism, identity, representation and marginalization play in contemporary literature, and how literature can contribute to address them.

 

Describing the Border, Writing on the Border
Saturday, Oct. 2
1:00 p.m. (EST)

Daniel R. Fernández is Associate Professor at Lehman College and Chair of the Department of Languages and Literature. He will be joined by Sonia Robles, Norma Iglesias Prieto and Daniel Salinas Basave to analyze the meaning and scope of the border between Mexico and the United States as an environment of struggles and challenges as well as creative and audacious proposals in a continuous battle to defend human dignity.

 

Will We Surpass the Time Barrier in the USA?
Saturday, Oct. 2
2:00 p.m. (EST)

Adriana Pacheco is a Mexican Affiliated Researcher at LLILAS Benson and member of the International Board of Advisors at the University of Texas at Austin. She will guide the conversation with Fernando Olszanski (Argentina), Pedro Medina (Peru) and María Angélica García (Venezuela) regarding the boom of Hispanic literature in the world, as well as new strategies to sell books and get to know the reader.

 

América Fantástica
Saturday, Oct. 2
3:00 p.m. (EST)

Mariano Villareal, administrator of “Literatura Fantástica” a website specialized on novelties about fantasy literature and Sci-Fi in Spain and renowned anthologist, will guide a panel about the relevance, trends and interests around fantasy and Sci-Fi literature in Latin American. Mariano is joined by a great constellation of authors, namely Edmundo Paz Soldán (Bolivia), Daína Chaviano (Cuba), Martín Felipe Castagnet (Argentina) and Teresa López-Pellisa (Spain).

 

Between the Breath and the Abyss
Saturday, Oct. 2
4:00 p.m. (EST)

Between the Breath and the Abyss: Poetics on Beauty (Entre el aliento y el precipicio: poéticas sobre la belleza) is a bilingual anthology that collects the ideas of a select group of authors about the presence of beauty in poetry and life. For this panel, Nuria Morgado, an Associate Professor of contemporary Spanish literature at the College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, will direct the quartet of talented voices conformed by Raquel Abend (Venezuela), Odette Alonso (Cuba), Keila Vall de la Valle (Venezuela) and Silvia Guerra (Uruguay).

 

Documentary Screening: Change the Subject
Saturday, Oct. 2
5 p.m. (EST)

Change the Subject presents the story of a group of university students committed to advancing and promoting the rights and dignity of undocumented people from their first days at Dartmouth College. Sparked by an instance of anti-immigrant sentiment in their library catalog, these students carried their advocacy from Dartmouth Library to the halls of Congress. The film shows how an instance of campus activism entered the national spotlight and how a cataloging term became a flashpoint in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill. Melissa Castillo Planas, an assistant professor in Lehman’s Department of English, served as a film producer.

 

Conversation with Liliana Colanzi
Sunday, Oct. 3
1 p.m. (EST)

Antonio Córdoba Cornejo, an associate professor at Manhattan College who specializes in Spanish-language science fiction, moderates a conversation with Colanzi, a Bolivian writer, editor, and journalist whose research focuses on genres such as science fiction, horror, and the fantastic in modern and contemporary Latin American literature.

 

Location Information:
Streamed on Facebook Live through the @FILNYC account