Why are we going to the Book Fair?

"What did you miss in such and such a place?" they ask in Galicia, when it's not clear why anyone would go there. Last year, 1,126,351 people attended the Buenos Aires International Book Fair . In 2023, more than 1,200,000 . Why do we go ? What did we miss at the Fair?

Laura, Portuguese by birth and living in Argentina for a lifetime, goes every time there are activities featuring authors from her country. She happily says she enjoys being spoken to in her language, which she rarely uses here, and that it feels good to hear and sound her native tongue again. Laura goes to the Fair, then, to be who she is again.

Although she was born in Buenos Aires, Lucía Higuera has been in Bariloche since 2015. A writer, bookseller, librarian, and workshop facilitator, she has just published her first collection of poetry, Agua de Bebida , and was presented at the Fair by the Fondo Editorial Rionegrino (FER). So, in addition to her book presentation last Friday, Lucía aims to make her work visible, circulate, and reach readers. For her, the exhibition is a possibility, a door that can be opened, that deserves to be opened.

Patricia visited the Fair on Thursday. She wanted to explore it, as she does every year, and attend a conference. A psychologist, teacher, and poet, she visits the exhibition every year to reconnect with friends, children of immigrants like herself, to listen, read, and discover. For her, the Fair is both a meeting place and a place to affirm her identity and her passions.

Irina also visits La Rural every year. Although she buys books year-round, the Book Fair is something else for her, a ritual. Since she was a little girl, the exhibition has been an annual event shared with her mother in childhood and with her sister in adulthood. For her, the Fair is a journey that connects her with who she was and who she is when she falls in love with a novel.

Porteños and men go to the Book Fair to confirm our interest . More than a million of us buy tickets, line up, squeeze in between the tables, and, if we can, buy a copy. We like to see ourselves like this, readers, interested in books. The mayor of Buenos Aires, Jorge Macri, stated a few days ago that half a million people take advantage of the city's cultural offerings. That's no small feat. It's who we are. Perhaps we should defend it.