25 Best Kept Secrets in Latin America

In celebration of it 25th anniversary, FIL Guadalajara (aka the Guadalajara Book Fair) has announced the 25 Best Kept Secrets in Latin America program:

25 writers. Narrators. All invited to Guadalajara to be part of The 25 Best Kept Secrets in Latin America. With this project, the Guadalajara International Book Fair seeks to tear down the borders separating Latin American literature and trace a route for the literature created throughout the continent, and in the year when it celebrates its first quarter of a century as the major publishing gathering in Ibero-America. This event will allow us to have in Guadalajara 25 voices and languages that will offer visitors the same number of ways to decipher, today, Latin America. [. . .]

The group is formed by narrators with more than one published book and whose works are very rarely known outside their countries The authors were chosen through a process that involved reading dozens of books and an extensive consultation process with other writers, publishers, booksellers, journalists and literary critics from Latin America. A committee of readers made the final selection, giving form to this group of authors who have taken writing as a vital option, representing literary views from 15 different Latin American countries.

The meeting of The 25 Best Kept Secrets will be organized around five discussion tables where groups of five authors will talk about their interests and the public will be able to know what is most representative of them. This will take place from Sunday, November 27 through Thursday, December 1 from 19:00 to 21:00. Also, these writers will have meetings with agents and publishers, and they will join young people as part of the Echoes of FIL program.

As if the tequila wasn’t reason enough to attend . . . But seriously, FIL Guadalajara is an absolutely amazing fair. It’s a great place to learn about authors in a wonderful setting that’s both beautiful and loaded with readers who are genuinely thrilled to meet and listen to famous authors. It’s pretty stunning, and everyone involved in publishing and Spanish-language translation has to go at some point in time.

Anyway, here’s the list of the “25 Best Kept Secrets”:

Juan Alvarez (Colombia)
Luis Alberto Bravo (Ecuador)
Andres Burgos (Colombia)
Fabian Casas (Argentina)
Miguel Antonio Chavez (Ecuador)
Carlos Cortes (Costa Rica)
Francisco Diaz Klaassen (Chile)
Jacinta Escudos (El Salvador)
Nona Fernandez (Chile)
Fernanda Garcia Lao (Argentina)
Ulises Juarez Polanco (Nicaragua)
Roberto Martinez Bachrich (Venezuela)
Emiliano Monge (Mexico)
Javier Mosquera Saravia (Guatemala)
Diego Munoz Valenzuela (Chile)
Enrique Planas (Peru)
Maria Eugenia Ramos (Honduras)
Luis Miguel Rivas (Colombia)
Giovanna Rivero (Bolivia)
Hernan Ronsino (Argentina)
Pablo Soler Frost (Mexico)
Daniela Tarazona (Mexico)
Dani Umpi (Uruguay)
Eduardo Varas (Ecuador)
Carlos Oriel Wynter Melo (Panama)