A whopping 907,300 attendees came through the Guadalajara Expo’s doors between Nov. 30 and Dec. 8, just shy of 50,000 more than last year’s figure of 857,315. The number also breaks the FIL’s previous attendance record from the 2019 event, which occurred not long before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down public events across Mexico.

“This year’s fair exceeded our expectations in every way,” Marisol Schulz Manaut, general director of the FIL, told the U.S. publishing industry trade newspaper Publishers Weekly.

Organizers said that the fair also exceeded other expectations: The number of publishing companies with stands at the FIL this year was 2,769, an increase of 294 from last year. Also, 18,100 industry professionals attended as guests this year, up by 700 from 2023.

University of Guadalajara Rector Ricardo Villanueva Lormelí told the newspaper El Economista that FIL’s numbers this year “broke all the records that the fair has,” making it likely that next year, organizers would expand the FIL outside its traditional home at the Guadalajara Expo and add satellite locations around the city.

The event, founded in 1987 by former University of Guadalajara rector Raúl Padilla López, attracts publishers and industry executives from Spain, Mexico and Latin America, as well as from non-Spanish-speaking countries around the world, such as Norway, Taiwan and Italy. Increasingly, that list of countries includes the U.S., where demand for Spanish-language content from Latin America is increasing.

Publishers Weekly noted that 150 U.S. librarians this year attended the fair through FIL’s Free Pass Program with the American Library Association. The program helps U.S. librarians acquire Spanish-language materials.

The event is also increasingly becoming a must-visit for publishers and movie companies looking to make translation, licensing or film-rights deals.

“Audiences aren’t just seeking stories set in Latin America,” said Carla Cumming Rivero, an attendee who is the development manager for Mexico and Latin America with the television and film agency Scenic Rights. “They want stories told by Latin Americans, with cultural nuances and perspectives that only local creators can provide,” she told Publishers Weekly.

The FIL is also a required stop for aspiring children’s book illustrators in Latin America, who network with publishers and professionals and can have their portfolio assessed affordably by a professional. Many also attend the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, an event within an event held at FIL that this year launched the Bologna Portfolio Prize, a new award recognizing illustrators early in their careers. Aspiring writers also take advantage of the affordable writing and marketing workshops led by authors and industry professionals.

But the Guadalajara weeklong event, whose entrance fee is a highly affordable 25 pesos (US $1.24), also attracts a large number of book lovers each year, drawn in by the chance to see their favorite authors in person, buy books directly from publishers and mingle with other aficionados.

“The FIL is unique in that it is a significant trade show, yes, but it is also a major book festival,” Ethan Nosowsky, an editorial director at the Minneapolis publisher Graywolf Press told Publishers Weekly. “I love that the fair opens up to an enthusiastic public who are buying books directly from publisher stands, where they are generously displayed, and where young and old pack halls for author events.”

According to Schulz, publishers participating this year reported an estimated 35% increase in their sales. Overall, the event took in about 124 million pesos (US $6.1 million), organizers told the newspaper La Jornada.

With reports from El Economista, La Jornada and Publishers Weekly

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Webcams de México’s stationery cameras captured two out of three of those sorts of events last week: after the September 19 earthquake that was felt from its epicenter in Michoacán as well as in 11 states.

Their webcams captured views of the earthquake happening and its damage in places like Mexico City, Michoacán and Colima. It also captured the odd “earthquake lights phenomenon”— flashing lights in the sky — that occurred over Mexico City as a result of another 6.9 magnitude earthquake a few days later.

Meanwhile, Webcams de Mexico’s cameras, trained on volcanos around the country, also were capturing activity at the iconic Popocatépetl Volcano and the Colima Volcano.

Así se vieron las luces en el cielo de Ciudad de México #CDMX durante el #sismo magnitud 6.9 de esta madrugada, 1:16 horas #22deSeptiembre2022 .

Vista Oriente desde @Miralto Torre Latino.

Para ver en vivo:https://t.co/Yctth8F3tS

Video pic.twitter.com/uDdP0TlVKn

— Webcams de México (@webcamsdemexico) September 22, 2022

Government officials use the website’s 140 cameras in 62 locales around Mexico as a resource for emergency management. In 2015, when record-setting Patricia, the world’s strongest tropical cyclone ever in terms of wind speed, passed through Mexico, causing at least US $462 million in total damage, the federal government used the website to track the storm’s impact on the Yucatán Peninsula.

When Mexico isn’t facing an emergency, the website’s real purpose is to show Mexicans — and anyone else around the globe — views of the country’s beauty from Colima to Chiapas. This includes Pueblos Mágicos; zócalos of major cities, from Mexico City to Morelia; and Mexico’s beaches in places like Acapulco, Huatulco, and Cancún and Cozumel.

So who or what entity created Webcams de Mexico, you may ask? Perhaps the Tourism Ministry? Was it the brainchild of a proud Carlos Slim-like Mexican billionaire with plenty of time and money to set up so many cameras in so many places?

Interestingly, Webcams de Mexico wasn’t set up by the Mexican government. It wasn’t even set up by a Mexican. It was the idea of an Italian man who first came to Mexico on a visit to a friend.

The story of Webcams de México began in 2006, when Italian Nicola Rustichelli came to Urupan, Michoacán. While staying with a friend, he met the love of his life, a Mexican named Cristina Heredia. Rustichelli decided to stay in Mexico and the two married and eventually became business partners in Webcams de México.

Rustichelli told the newspaper El Pais that he noticed in his first years here that Mexico didn’t have webcams transmitting images of video from iconic landscapes or tourist destinations, as was common by then in Europe. He decided the country he had fallen in love with could use to show off a little.

His first camera was installed atop a friend’s house in Monterrey that had a view of most of the city. Soon after, he struck a deal with Monterrey’s Torre Latinoamericana, which provided an internet connection and paid a promotional fee.

As he expanded, Rustichelli realized that Mexico’s most stunning views were privileged views, often only seen from exclusive hotels. He started visiting hoteliers around Mexico and making deals to install his cameras for a fee, for which he also put the hotels’ logos in a corner of the feed’s image.

One of his first agreements was made with the Mexico City Gran Hotel, located in the capital’s downtown zocalo.

The website launched in June 2011, with 22 cameras in cities as widespread as Tijuana, Veracruz and Playa del Carmen. “I wanted this to be on the national level,” Rustichelli said. “We couldn’t cover the whole country, but at least we could show places between Tijuana and Cancún.”

For the first three years, Heredia paid the bills. “Those first three years were very difficult,” Rustichelli said. “She had invested a certain amount and she wasn’t recouping it.”

But eventually, it took off and since 2012, it’s also made money by selling broadcasts of its cameras into local tourism offices. “The idea is that they’ll begin to see this camera as a tool to promote tourism,” he said.

This year, as Mexican fans gear up for the World Cup in November, the website’s newest project has been promoting interest in the soccer championship, with travel tips and guides to Mexico’s scheduled matches.

And, of course, video footage of Qatar.

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Dylan Esaú’s kidnapper, identified by authorities as Margarita N., was also ordered to pay a fine of 521,280 pesos (US $25,000), according to the Chiapas Attorney General’s Office.

She will serve her sentence in the same prison where she has been in custody since her arrest in August 2020.

The child was recovered on August 13, 2020, in a rural Chiapas community in the municipality of Cintalapa, where Margarita had been keeping him. Authorities found him in good health and gave him back to his mother.

Dylan was taken from the Mercosur market on June 30, 2020, after his mother, who worked there as a vendor, sent him with his five-year-old sister to meet their grandmother, who was working at another stall in the market.

Video surveillance showed two children approaching Dylan and luring him away to a woman later identified as Margarita.

When authorities tracked down the children, one of them, a young girl, told authorities that Margarita had said that Dylan was her son and paid them 200 pesos to bring him to her.

Authorities said they found evidence of Margarita hanging around the market for two days before the kidnapping.

Officials said that Margarita told police after her arrest that she had kidnapped the boy because she could not have children of her own and was hoping to convince her ex-husband to reunite with her.

In the weeks following his abduction, Dylan’s mother held several demonstrations in San Cristóbal and Tuxtla Gutiérrez and even petitioned President López Obrador, saying that the search for Dylan was going too slowly.

The investigation ended up exposing an unrelated child-trafficking ring in San Cristóbal and resulted in the rescue of 23 kidnapped children.

With reports from Milenio

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Since he began coming to Mexico 25 years ago to photograph Day of the Dead celebrations in Metepec, México state, the Staten Island native has taken his trusty Nikon camera with him everywhere he goes while living and traveling throughout Mexico, documenting life in both cities and remote villages, photographing average Mexicans doing everything from the quotidian to the extraordinary.

His quest to capture the life of average people in Mexico has at times taken him to places and events rarely seen even by many Mexicans.

Sorrentino’s photographs have graced the pages of Mexico News Daily for the last two years, giving our readers a close-up look at indigenous rituals dating back centuries, the traditional process of making artisanal tequila, the life of village farmers and Day of the Dead artists, the hard work of Acapulco fishermen plying their trade and much more.

When he’s not taking photos, he’s also the writer of books and plays, including a book about one of Mexico City’s indigenous pueblos originarios, San Gregorio Atlapulco.

The Centro Cultural Somos Uno in San Pedro Cholula, Puebla, is recognizing Sorrentino’s work in Mexico with a solo photography exhibit entitled Campesinas y Mujeres de Pueblos Ancestrales (Farm Women and Women of Ancestral Towns), now on display at the center through March 23.

The exhibit, featuring 36 black-and-white photographs from his projects undertaken between 2003 and 2021, highlights women at work at home and in the fields, as well as their role in traditional ceremonies. The exhibit is aptly timed for Women’s History Month in March.

If you’re in Cholula this week, stop by the Centro Cultural Somos Uno this Saturday at 6 p.m. CST for the exhibit’s opening reception, where you can meet Sorrentino in person.

• The Centro Cultural Somos Uno is located at Calle 3 Oriente #210, San Pedro Cholula, Puebla. For more information, visit the center’s Facebook page.

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Book sales have been up since 2020 and continue to rise, with the industry magazine Publishers Weekly reporting that sales of print books in the United States in 2021 rose by US $67.8 million. Book sales in the United Kingdom in 2021 were the highest in a decade, reported the British newspaper the Guardian, and the market research company Mordor Intelligence expects global e-book sales to grow annually — a total of US $5 billion between 2021 and 2026.

Whether you’re thinking about writing fiction or memoir, the San Miguel Literary Sala has workshops this month to help would-be writers and writers in need of some brushing up or inspiration.

For the first time since 2021, the organization is offering a combination of online and in-person writing workshops in its hometown of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. Throughout last year, the organization offered only online events due to COVID.

A list of their offerings this month, which start today, follows below, with all events listed in Central Standard Time:

• Feb 14, 16, 18, 10 a.m. — Kathrin Lake: “Memoirs: How to Show the Past (Not Tell It).” Use fiction techniques to make your memoir a compelling read and avoid falling into the trap of telling versus showing. Limited to 15 participants. This live, interactive workshop will be conducted online.
• Feb 14, 1–4:30 p.m. — Audrey Wick: “Women’s Fiction and the Merits of Happily Ever After.” Learn how to get your foot in the door of a US $1 billion-a-year industry: the romance genre. Also covered will be discussions of category romances and women’s fiction and the difference between weaving a romantic thread through a story and centralizing romance as the plot. This live, interactive workshop will take place online.
• Feb 15–19, 10 a.m. — Judyth Hill: “WildWriting Adventures in San Miguel.” This master class will be held in San Miguel de Allende in person. It starts with a short immersion into the WildWriting technique, then spends five days exploring inspiring sites in the historic city while journaling and practicing various writing styles, including memoir, food writing, travel writing, and fiction. This class is limited to 12 participants.
• February 20, 6–9:20 p.m. — David Robbins: “Art and Craft of the Narrative.” This workshop focused on storytelling surveys the basics of powerful writing and authorial voice. This live, interactive workshop will be conducted online.
• February 21 & 23, 6–7:30 p.m. — Laurie Gough: “Memoir Writing: Daring to Share Your Story.” Learn the craft of writing from reading master memoirists, the instructor’s own experience and in-class exercises. and transform your life stories into an inspiring literary narrative. This workshop takes place online.
• February 22, 6–9:20 p.m. — Suzanne Van Atten: “Art of the Scene, the Essential Element of Narrative Writing.” Examine the major components of a scene and how to develop it through lectures, discussing excerpts from fiction and nonfiction and writing exercises. This live interactive workshop will be conducted online.
• February 28, March 2 and 4, 3–5 p.m. — Danielle Trussoni: “How to Tell the Story of Your Life.” This master class will allow writers to discuss their personal stories; will address questions writers face when writing about family, friendships or real-life experiences; and will help participants pick the perfect genre for their manuscript. This in-person class is limited to 15 students.

For more information on these workshops and to register, visit the San Miguel Literary Sala website.

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While a work of fiction, What Strange Paradise tackles the real-life tragedy of the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, focusing on the story of two children to delve into the effects of empathy and hope and despair and indifference on the plight of global refugees. “The story so astutely unpacks the us-versus-them dynamics of our divided world that it deserves to be an instant classic,” Wendell Steavenson wrote in the New York Times Book Review in 2021. “I haven’t loved a book this much in a long time.”

El Akkad’s first book, 2017’s dystopian American War, which depicted a near-future civil war in the United States, was an international bestseller translated into 13 languages. The BBC listed it among its 100 most influential novels.

During this live Zoom event, El Akkad will discuss with The Literary Sala’s Merilyn Simonds his fiction as well as his experiences as a reporter covering the war in Afghanistan, Egypt’s Arab Spring, the military trials at Guantanamo Bay and, more recently, Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.

The Literary Sala, based in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and best known for hosting the annual San Miguel Writers’ Conference in that city, is presenting the interview with El Akkad, which takes place from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, as part of its Distinguished Speaker Series. Tickets are pay-what-you-wish, from US $10–$50. For more information visit the San Miguel Literary Sala website.

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The San Miguel Literary Sala will cover all these topics in four different online workshops offered this month between November 8 and November 11.

Workshop times below are all in Central Standard Time:

November 8 and 10, 5:30–7 p.m. — Amy Gottlieb: “Music and Texture: A Creative Approach to Revision.” Revision is often viewed alternately as dreary and ruthless, yet it can be a creative and transformative process when you re-envision a draft in terms of its internal logic, its music, and its patterns. Gottlieb will help participants break down revision into a three-part process, exploring creative techniques to help find the vitality in your work and make it shine.

November 9 and 11, 3–4:30 p.m. — Nadine Kenney Johnstone: “ Writing your Truth in the Personal Essay and Memoir.” If you want to write about your past, it’s crucial to dig deep enough to write your truth, which sometimes means overcoming worries about how people will respond, especially if they are one of the characters you are writing about. By studying other truth-telling writers, participants will learn how to silence their inner critic and tell the story they must.

November 9 and 11, 5:30–7 p.m. — Elizabeth Kracht: “Rejection Bingo! How to Improve Your Manuscript Through Rejection.” Learning how to use rejection to achieve your publishing goals can help get that book accepted for publication. Kracht will teach you participants to change their perspective on rejection in a fun and interactive way and use it to their advantage in the publishing industry. She will also cover the top 10 editorial reasons for rejection.

November 10, 3–6:20 p.m. — Annie Tucker: “Who’s in Charge Here? Choosing the Right Point of View for Your Story.” Tucker will help writers identify all points of view available to them and determine which one to use for consistent story narration. A series of exercises will help participants plumb the depths of their characters’ minds and ensure that readers have the reliable narrators they need to guide them through a novel.

For more information on these workshops and to register, visit the San Miguel Literary Sala at their website.

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The artwork’s theft, and its eventual return to the museum two years later by an Italian art dealer, is credited with endowing upon Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece — only somewhat well-known at the time — the international fame it has today.

In 2021, author and artist Jonathan Santlofer took this historic incident and wove it into a speculative, suspenseful tale of what might have happened around this famous theft and the painting’s eventual return. Author Elinor Lipman will interview Santofler about his book, The Last Mona Lisa, live online for the San Miguel Literary Sala on November 7.

In their conversation, Lipman and Santlofer will discuss how the author recreated the world of early 20th-century Europe for his fast-paced art detective novel, which involves a professor who is the thief’s grandson, a rogue Interpol investigator, a Russian art thief and more. In Santlofer’s novel, the fictional Professor Perrone’s efforts to find out the truth about the theft cause him to stumble into the contemporary underworld of art forgery and obsession, putting his and other people’s lives in danger.

Santlofer is the author of six other novels, including the international bestseller The Death Artist, and the Nero-award-winning Anatomy of Fear. His memoir, The Widower’s Notebook, appeared on over a dozen best books of 2018 lists and was featured in a segment on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross in the United States.

He is also an accomplished fine artist whose work has been shown in more than 200 exhibitions and included in major private and public collections.

Lipman is the award-winning author of 16 fiction and nonfiction books. Her first novel, Then She Found Me, was made into a feature film starring Helen Hunt, Bette Midler and Colin Firth. Her most recent book is the novel Rachel to the Rescue.

The interview will take place on Zoom from 6–7:30 p.m. CST. Tickets are on a pay what you wish scale ranging from US $5 to $50. To find out more information on this event, visit the San Miguel Literary website.

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Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford lays out an unsettling and myth-busting picture of the historical event, one full of backstabbing and skullduggery.

On October 17, the San Miguel Literary Sala will interview two of these authors about the Alamo in an online event open to the public as part of its Distinguished Speakers Series.

The live, interactive interview at 6 p.m. CDT will take place on Zoom, meaning that viewers will be able to interact with the guests during a question-and-answer period. Tickets are on a pay-what-you-wish scale — ranging from US $5–$50.

Brad Rockwell, an environmental attorney and the author of The Life and Times of Alberto G. Garcia: Physician, Mexican Revolutionary, Texas Journalist, Yogi, will interview Tomlinson and Stanford about the popular Alamo narrative and what really happened. Among other topics, they’ll discuss how John Wayne’s passion-project movie The Alamo (1960) and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas both played key roles during the 20th century to influence people in the United States’ beliefs about the historical event.

While some in the U.S. today see Texas’s fight to separate from Mexico as having been about freedom and democracy, in reality, say the book’s authors, money and the hope of making Texas a slave state were important factors in why people like Davy Crockett, James Bowie and William B. Travis fought. Others who died at the Alamo were mostly adventurers and criminals.

Tomlinson, who has reported from more than 30 countries and nine wars for the Associated Press, is currently a columnist for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Tomlinson Hill, about his family’s history of slave ownership in Texas.

Stanford has written for the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC.com and Texas Monthly. A former communications director for the mayor of Austin, Steve Adler, he previously worked as a political consultant and now publishes a weekly newsletter called The Experiment.

For more information or to register, visit the San Miguel Literary Sala website.

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All classes are live and interactive, conducted via videoconferencing software.

Times given below are in Central Daylight Time:

• October 18 & 20, 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. — David Dykes: “The World Wants to Make You a Better Writer.” Learn to break through your blocks and limitations in this workshop with a teacher, editor and author who will show you through writing exercises, examples from great works of fiction and interactive imaginative activities how to hone your skills in using sensory details to make your fiction more vivid, compelling and coherent. Dykes has taught at Texas State University, the University of New Orleans and the University of Tennessee.
• October 19 & 21, 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. — Tom Coash: “To Be or Not To Be,” the Art of Writing Compelling Monologues.” Monologues are booming in popularity, and they can be many things, but what they can’t be is forced or fake. This seminar will take a close look at successful monologues and use playwriting and theater techniques plus writing exercises to give you a fresh look at the art of single-handed spiels. A playwright and director, Coash currently teaches at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program.
• October 19, 4–7 p.m. — Susan Meyers: “Jumpstart Your Story: Building Energy from Beginning to End.” Get started — or recharge — your novel or memoir project by delving into several less frequently studied narrative tools like momentum, shaping, pacing and information release to improve your narrative. Meyers is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Seattle University.
• Oct 25 & 27, 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. — David Ramsey: “The Divine Details: The Key Ingredient in Creative Nonfiction.” Details are the precise notes that allow a piece of writing to sing. Ramsey, whose writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Republic, Slate and many other publications, will help you create fictive details that show the reader something clear, specific and unforgettable. Explore how to hone your powers of observation and make your writing vivid, using three key elements: specificity, purpose, and surprise.
• October 30, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. (six-hour master class) — Laura Davis: “Memoir: How to Create Unforgettably Vivid Moments Your Readers Will Never Forget.” A writing teacher and the author of seven nonfiction books, Davis will teach you to create emotionally resonant moments that pull readers into your world on the page and you’ll leave with a powerful first draft of a crucial scene, a list of future scenes to develop and a set of new skills.

For more information about these workshops, tickets, and biographies of the instructors, visit the San Miguel Literary Sala website.

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