Well, once a year since 1930…to be honest.
This book fair already happened a little bit everywhere in the portuguese capital (Avenida da Liberdade, a Praça D. Pedro IV, a Rua Augusta e a Praça do Comércio) but in the late years it has been on Parque Eduardo VII.
This year, the Book Fair will be from 29 May to 16 June. It will have 636 bok brands with more than 200 stands in total, making the Lisbon Book Fair one of the biggest book event in Portugal.
The bigger publishing companies organize their several publishing houses on branded dedicated plazas, while smaller publishers and used bookstores have one or two stands. Micropublishers either are not present in the event or joined together in the “small press tent” due to the high costs of having a stand. Others prefer to share a space and it is not unusual to see to publishing houses together in a space.
Unfortunatelly, in recent years some vanities can be found, since the organization does not discriminates this kind of business.
Besides the books, there are food stands, wifi plazas, story tellers for kids, autographs, cook shows, and an exposition about reading habits. The event is organized by the Portuguese Association of Publishers and Book sellers.
This year, to comemorate the 20th aniversary of the Harry Potter Series, Presença (Harry Potter’s publishing house in Portugal) and the Portuguese Institute of Magic (Harry Potter fan group) is going to organize some activities for the Lisbon potterheads that includes a sorting hat cerimony, Quidditch training, transplanting mandrakes, etc…
By Carlos Silva
Born in 1989, Carlos Silva is a portuguese writer whose main interests are science fiction and weird fiction. He is also editor at Imaginauta (Indie press – http://www.imaginauta.net) and organizes several events as the Festival Contacto.
The Portuguese Portal of Fantasy and Science Fiction 