Jerusalem International Book Forum (JIBF) has postponed its 2024 event until next year. At a virtual meeting for the Forum and the Zev Birger Editorial Fellowship, JIBF director Sharon Katz spoke briefly about the postponement. “Unfortunately, as most of you know, [the Forum] can only happen in May 2025,” he said. “After a long wait, we realized that for the JIBF to take place in the safe and prosperous environment it deserves, we would have to wait for next year.” The dates of the 2025 event have not yet been announced. JIBF chairperson and former director Yoel Makov concluded the […]
Book Fairs
Frankfurt Concludes With A Speech From Rushdie
Frankfurt Book Fair concluded over the weekend, with overall trade attendance rising to 105,000 (up from 93,000 in 2022), a continuing rebound since the pandemic. (Our standard reminder: Their count is not what it seems. FBF tallies visits or scans rather than unique individuals. So the three trade days averaged 35,000 visits a day. Many of those were likely the same people, on multiple days.) What was supposed to be a celebration of the fair’s 75th year was ultimately politically fraught. In the halls of the convention center the conflict in the Middle East was inescapable, sometimes with messy outcomes. […]
Frankfurt Book Fair: JIBF Breakfast, AI in Publishing
The Jerusalem International Book Forum held its annual reunion breakfast on Thursday at Villa Bonn in Frankfurt, an emotional scene this year, in light of the developing situation in the Middle East. The JIBF organizers themselves were unable to attend, and Zoomed in from their homes, making remarks that caused people in the audience–a high-powered crowd including editors and executives from the corporate publishers and bigger US indies–to tear up. The event honors past fellows of the Zev Birger Editorial Fellowship sponsored by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which brings book professionals to the JIBF for networking and development. Production coordinator Sharon […]
Frankfurt Book Fair: Drop-Outs, Unease, and Malaviya’s Remarks
The Frankfurt Book Fair kicked off on Tuesday, and it was clear from the beginning–and even from the days leading up to it–that the unofficial theme would be the crisis in the Middle East. At the opening press conference on Tuesday morning, held in a larva-shaped pod in the fairgrounds courtyard, keynote speaker journalist Gaia Vince talked about climate catastrophe and global migration, but the first English language question from the press was about the controversy surrounding Palestinian author Adania Shibli. Since organizers announced last Friday that a celebration for Shibli’s book had been cancelled by the prize organizers and […]
Malaysian and Indonesian Publishers Withdraw from Frankfurt Book Fair
Two more organizations have pulled out of the Frankfurt Book Fair, following FBF director Juergen Boos’ statements that FBF “stands with full solidarity on the side of Israel” and will “make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible.” On Monday, the Indonesian Publishers Association (Ikapi) withdrew their participation from the event. “The Frankfurt Book Festival organizers’ decision to only support and provide a platform to Israel has undermined the ideals of dialogue and efforts to build mutual understanding between countries,” Ikapi chair Arys Hilman said in a statement. Today, Malaysia’s education ministry also dropped out of the fair. “The ministry will not […]
Celebration of Palestinian Novelist at Frankfurt Book Fair Is Cancelled; Emirates Publishers Association Withdraws
On Friday, a planned celebration of Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail, at the Frankfurt Book Fair was cancelled by the prize organizers, following the violence of the last week in the Middle East that began with an attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7. The novel was being honored as the winner of the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, a German literature prize for a woman from the global south presented annually at the fair. Published by New Directions in the US and translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette, Shibli’s book depicts, according to the NYT, “the true story of the 1949 […]