Italy’s annual Book Fair for Small and Medium-sized Publishing Houses was not held last year because of the pandemic. This year it is back. Entitled More Books, More Freedom, the event took place from 4-8 December at the Nuvola dell’Eur, a futuristic and suggestive location in Rome. Promoted and organized by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), the country’s most important publishing event is now 20 years old–an important milestone for publishers who are betting on the future: a tomorrow filled with unknowns, but also and above all characterized by great hopes and aspirations.
Happy to present their new products and catalogs to the public, 484 exhibitors participated in the 2021 edition of the Fair, whose theme was Freedom.
But the Fair did not consist solely of this. Its real heart was its cultural program. In fact, the 5-day event was marked by a continuous succession of events for all tastes and ages, including meetings with authors, readings, debates on current issues, initiatives for the promotion of reading, music and live performances.
Present at the trade fair from its very beginning, this year the Daughters of St. Paul took part in it with a wide variety of new editions, many very appropriate for Christmas. They too offered visitors a rich program of cultural events, including author presentations that gave the public the chance to enter into an enthusiastic comparison of ideas and debate with them.
Starting this year, the Fair now allows Internet users to follow its most important events via live streaming on a new platform–Più Libri TV–which enables them to watch the various encounters both live and on demand.