Starting the course is always a good opportunity to ask questions. The book sector constantly asks itself questions and will put them on the table at the XI edition of the Forum Edita, which was inaugurated this Monday with a tribute to the editor Beatriz de Moura – who passed away last April – and will run until next September 9.
Read more Three million theatergoers in Barcelona for the third consecutive year
“We are living through a brutal technological revolution and what happens is that we are afraid. And, faced with that fear, what can an editor do? Choose what is published and what is disseminated. And in that, De Moura was a true reference,” said the president of the Gremi d’Editors, Daniel Fernández, during the opening ceremony at the Saló de Cent, shortly before giving way to the writer Luis Landero, who gave a lecture in memory of the founder of the Tusquets publishing house.
She was a woman with an extraordinary personality, one among the greats since the world of high culture considered it her home”
“She was a woman with an extraordinary personality, one among the greats since the world of high culture considered it her home,” described the author of Juegos de la edad tardía, who did not hesitate to recall the day he met his “boss”: “The first thing I heard was a fierce scolding. Luckily, it wasn’t directed at me, but I got an idea of her character. She had called me to tell me that she already had an editor, that I was becoming part of the family, because Tusquets was that, a family, a home for everyone.”
From there, the editor, a reference in publishing in Spain and Latin America, became “one of the most important people” in Landero’s life, as she gave a great boost to his literary career. She taught him how to navigate the scene, encouraged him to socialize with other intellectuals, and became a teacher to all in the art of ending “annoying silences.”
She always did all this “with elegance but also with character. You never had to get into conflict with Beatriz,” recalled, with much affection, editor Anne-Marie Métailié, from the Parisian label Editions Métailié, in a roundtable later joined by journalist and writer Sergio Vila-Sanjuán and fellow editors Juan Cerezo, from Tusquets, and Miguel Aguilar, from Penguin Random House. The latter admitted that if he started working in the sector, it was thanks to the Brazilian. “I am an editor because Beatriz and Antonio López (co-owner editor of Tusquets) offered me to come to the publishing house to try it out, to see if I liked it. I liked it because otherwise I wouldn’t be here today.”
For his part, Vila-Sanjuán, co-director of Forum Edita, recalled the words with which the editor herself described her label: “Tusquets is a fun, elegant, and left-wing publishing house.” The journalist in charge of the Cultura/s supplement of La Vanguardia pointed out that “both she and Toni knew how to make Tusquets a label” and become “a whole style of Barcelona’s cultural life.”
Organized by the Gremi d’Editors de Catalunya and Pompeu Fabra University and under the title The memory and the accelerated future of the book, Forum Edita presents itself as a new opportunity to analyze the past, present, and future of publishing. For this, there will be 15 presentations, debates, and round tables, as well as 32 international specialists, such as editorial consultant Rüdiger Wischenbart; the general director of the Syndicat national de l’édition (SNE), Renaud Lefebvre; or the literature professor, author, and translator Eduardo Lago.
All of them will focus on the impact of artificial intelligence on creation and copyright, as well as the role of bookstores and new forms of editorial management. Likewise, the sessions will address other no less interesting topics, such as the revival of the classics, new prescribers, or what it is like to read in the age of social networks.
Read more Casa Santiveri refinances its debt with the banks and avoids bankruptcy proceedings
