Visitors to the Taipei International Book Exhibition, one of Asia’s largest book fairs, will get a chance to interact with writers, illustrators and artists from around the world during the fair which runs from Wednesday next week to Feb. 4, the show’s organizer said yesterday.
Among them will be Banana Yoshimoto, the pen name for Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto, who will attend a reading and signing event on Thursday next week for her new novel Sweet Hereafter, which is dedicated to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in March 2011.
Award-winning French illustrator and designer Marc Boutavant will attend a children’s arts workshop on Feb. 1, and will talk about his work at a discussion session on Feb. 2, the Taipei Book Fair Foundation said.
Belgian children’s book illustrator and writer Kitty Crowther, who won the 2010 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council — the biggest prize in children’s literature — and Carl Norac, a Belgian author of children’s books and poetry, are also scheduled to attend the event and meet with visitors.
As the theme country of this year’s exhibition, Belgium will showcase four exhibitions: comic books and illustrations; architecture by Victor Horta; the origin of saxophones; and poems and original manuscripts by Maurice Careme.
Another of the highlighted foreign artists will be Austrian illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger, winner of the 1990 Hans Christian Andersen Award, who will discuss her works during a talk on Feb. 4.
Argentine-born Canadian essayist and novelist Alberto Manguel, who wrote A History of Reading, will also talk at the show, the foundation said.
The exhibition, now in its 21st year, will be held at the Taipei World Trade Center.
It attracted 600,000 visitors last year, a new record.
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