Literary Festivals in Argentina: Cultural Participation and Glocal Debates
- SLAS
- 18 hours ago
- 6 min read
Dr. Elisabeth Goemans
In July and August 2026, I will travel to Argentina to visit various literary festivals and
book fairs as part of my postdoctoral project on cultural sociology, book studies, and
environmental humanities, generously funded by the SLAS 2026 Postdoctoral
Award. In this blog post, I explore a few dimensions of Argentinian book festival
culture that inform and shape my research.
With around 150 book fairs and festivals taking place each year (Argentina.gob.ar,
2023), Argentina offers no shortage of opportunities to experience book culture
firsthand. These initiatives have begun to attract scholarly attention, for instance from
Ana Gallego Cuiñas, who studies how these initiatives promote the cultural and
social role of literature in the public sphere (2022, p. 98-99).
Argentina’s book festival scene is strikingly diverse: events vary widely in their
organisation, aims, and audiences. A comparison between two fairs held yearly in
Buenos Aires, the Feria Internacional del Libro and the Feria de Editores (FED),
illustrates this well. The Feria Internacional draws over a million visitors each year
and offers an extensive programme in which major publishers have the chance to
display and promote their books.
Yet not all publishers benefit equally from the scale and visibility of the Feria
Internacional. Independent presses often struggle to enter its ecosystem, since the
cost of a stand at the Feria Internacional is far beyond their budget (Gallo, 2024). It is
out of this frustration that the Feria de Editores emerged, first organised in 2013 by
Víctor Malumián and Hernán López Winne. The FED offers a low-cost alternative,
not only for independent presses, but also for the visiting public, who can attend free
of charge. This commitment to accessibility is part of their aim to democratise book
culture. As Malumián explains, participation in the FED allows independent presses
to garner authentic and unfiltered feedback from readers, which helps them in their
editorial and strategic decision-making throughout the year (Gallo, 2024).
Book festivals and fairs are often understood as spaces where literary value is
created (Gallego Cuiñas, 2022, p. 106). Literary value is a slippery and contested
concept and has been fodder for much debate within literary studies (Dunst &
Vermeulen, 2025). Here, I use the term in a broad sense; to refer to the recognition
or prestige attached to a literary work or its author. That said, the question of literary
value is not my focus. Instead, I am interested in what these events do beyond the
creation of literary value – although whether literature can be separated from broader
sociocultural questions is a discussion for another day. More specifically, I want to
examine how these literary initiatives fulfil a wider sociocultural function: by
democratising cultural participation, fostering inclusivity within book culture, and
cultivating debate around both local and transnational societal challenges, such as
the climate crisis and marginalisation of certain social groups.
Let us consider, in that regard, the Festival Internacional de Literatura Tucumán
(FILT), founded in 2015 by Sofía de la Vega, Blass Rivadeneira, and Ezequiel
Nacusse. This festival takes place at the University of Tucumán and relies on various
forms of generous support from the Tucuman community and beyond. De la Vega
emphasises the festival’s contribution to the democratization of culture in the region,
which attracts a diverse, transgenerational public and benefits from the sustained
enthusiasm of international book sector professionals. While the FILT is locally
organised, it also has a transnational reach, attracting both national and international
publishers and authors (personal communication, 30 January 2026).
These ‘local’ festivals create spaces for cultural debates on ‘glocal’ matters, that is, on issues that concern the local community as well as transnational society. I understand the concept of glocalisation as the interaction between local and global dynamics that underpin the events described in this post. More specifically, sociologist Christian Karner refers to glocalisation as an illustration that globalisation unfolds […] in relation to other geographical scales that include the national, the regional and the local. Consequently, the global is rethought through its complex and contingent impacts on local life-worlds and the variable responses to multiple and multidirectional flows. (2023, p. 14)
The glocal, in other words, is a reminder that our globalised world has not made the local obsolete, but rather that different scales operate in dialogue with each other. The Feria del Libro de Jujuy illustrates this clearly: in 2025, the opening workshop, directed towards children, adolescents, and adults was organised in collaboration with Jujuy’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change “para hacer que las voces del pasado hablen sobre el presente y el futuro del planeta, llamando a la acción, a la conciencia y al respeto por la tierra y sus habitantes”. This workshop was not an exception in the programme, as debates, talks, and events on climate change, climate crisis, extractivism, energy efficiency were prominently featured throughout.
As such, the programme brings together sociocultural and climate-focused activities in dialogue with the growing body of literary production on climate crisis and planetary deterioration that has become increasingly visible in Argentinian, and more broadly, Latin American literature in recent years. This demonstrates how book festivals and fairs support alternative narratives against extractivism not only by highlighting literary production on the subject, but also by cultivating activist spaces surrounding the text.
Another glocal issue that gains visibility through literary events is that of Indigeneity and Indigenous rights. Indigenous communities have historically been marginalised in Argentina, and activists have long been advocating for recognition. Within the sphere of literary festivals, the Feria del Libro Originario, held annually since 2023 at the National Library in Buenos Aires, demonstrates how recognition of Indigenous cultures can be fostered precisely through literary representation and cultural mediation at book fairs and festivals. The Feria del Libro Originario offers a space where not only literature written by Indigenous writers is presented, but also, more broadly, where discussions of Indigenous histories and ethnography take place (Friera, 2025).
I am curious to explore how these contributions to political and ecological discourse foster transnational reflection. As of its 48th edition in 2024, the Feria Internacional del Libro has been organising “La palabra indígena” (Lorca, 2024), a series of panels and interviews with Indigenous writers such as Mapuche poet Liliana Ancalao and Wichí poet Lecko Zamora. Similarly, at the Feria del Libro de Salta in 2025, Kolla writer Milagro Domínguez presented an illustrated dictionary in the Achekilla language. At the presentation, he highlighted that the book is also a political act, which helps readers to understand how he and his community relate to their territory, and calling for agency in environmental protection, which he describes as a “garantía de conservación y de vida armónica para las futuras generaciones” (López, 2025).
The 2026 Postdoctoral Award allows me to delve into some of the questions briefly outlined above: how do these festivals foster inclusive debate? How do these initiatives grant space and conversations to authors otherwise marginalised within the transnational literary field? What is the role of book fairs in activism for sustainable answers to glocal issues? How do these initiatives contribute to imagining fairer futures? How do these spaces shape, and how are they shaped by the literary works and authors they showcase? I am immensely grateful to SLAS for funding this research, as it enables me to develop my project through multimodal analyses of these initiatives, their programmes, and interviews with involved cultural mediators. If you want to chat further about this project or happen to be in Argentina and would like to join me at a book fair or festival, I’d be very happy to hear from you!
Works cited
Argentina.gob.ar. (2023, January 9). Ya podés consultar el calendario de ferias del
libro de todo el país 2023 y vivir un verano a pura lectura.
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Dunst, A. &; Vermeulen, P. (Eds.). (2025). The Question of Literary Value. B2o, 7(3),
elDiarioAR. (2025, May 12). 49° Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires: los
números de una edición récord. https://www.eldiarioar.com/cultura/490-feria-
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Feria del Libro Jujuy. (n.d.). Programación 2025.
Friera, S. (2025, November 2). La Feria del Libro Originario, un espacio para discutir
la ficción de “nación blanca”. Página/12. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/870457-la-
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Gallego Cuiñas, A. (2022). Políticas y valores de los festivales literarios en el siglo
XXI: El FILBA Internacional de Buenos Aires. Revista Chilena de Literatura, (105),
Gallo, L. (Host). (2024). Ferias de libros – Eugenia Zicavo y Víctor Malumián. La
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Karner, C. (2022). Sociology in Times of Glocalization. Anthem Press.
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López, M. (2025, October 10). Milagro “Pachacutec” Domínguez presenta Achekilla,
su nuevo abecedario quechua. Página/12. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/864692-
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Lorca, J. (2024, May 12). La primera vez de los escritores indígenas en la Feria del
Libro de Buenos Aires. El País. https://elpais.com/argentina/2024-05-12/la-primera-
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