FRANKFURT, Oct 14 — The Frankfurt Book Fair, a subsidiary of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association, is the international publishing industry’s trade fair juggernaut. 

The Frankfurt Book Fair, held this year October 19-23, features 7,100 exhibitors from more than 100 countries. 

Around 275,000 visitors gather at the sprawling site, with approximately 10,000 accredited journalists and bloggers in attendance, and over 4,000 events on offer.

The fair also draws important players from other key media, including the film and gaming industries.

Since 1976, the Book Fair has featured an annual Guest of Honour country, which showcases its book market, literature, and culture in a variety of ways at the Guest of Honor Pavilion. 

The past three guests have been Indonesia, Finland, and Brazil; Flanders & the Netherlands will be this year’s joint Guest of Honour. 

With the slogan “Dit is wat we delen” (“This is what we share”), novels, nonfiction, and poetry — 454 new book releases in total — join new forms that have emerged from creative industries and other artistic fields, like a virtual-reality rendering of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion for the 1929 Catalonian world exhibition. 

In a statement last week, Canada has newly been announced as a future Guest of Honour for the 2020 edition of the fair.

Yorkshire, England-born artist David Hockney will be a keynote speaker at this year’s opening news conference, on October 18. 

Hockney will highlight the THE ARTS+ programming, which is focused on new businesses in creative and cultural industries, tackling such realms as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, and other trends in digital techniques. 

Hockney will present his own forthcoming jumbo-sized book from German publisher Taschen, which is one of the founding partners of THE ARTS+ program.

Deemed “an entire culinary atlas” in a statement, the Gourmet Gallery is something of a fair-within-a-fair of 80 exhibitors presenting cookbooks (around 1,000 titles). 

Coming from more than 20 countries, nations this year include Jamaica, Kurdistan, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Japan, and Sweden. 

The buzziest scene is the Show Kitchen and Gourmet Salon, which host cooking shows, tastings, and readings. 

This year, amongst other activities, ZAN society, an organisation founded to promote the rights of Afghan women, will spearhead a culinary event.

Providing a different tone, the Weltempfang Center for Politics, Literature, and Translation features panel discussions, talks, and readings with international authors, intellectuals, and translators. 

This year, the Weltempfang tackles the loaded topic of “Europe”, with panels wrestling with “Europe and Islam”, “Civilisations and Migrations”, “Communication and the Internet”, and “Open Society and the Beneficiaries of Fear”.

More information, visit here. — AFP-Relaxnews