The 26th Vilnius Book Fair opens Thursday at the Lithuanian capital’s Litexpo exhibition centre under the theme The Word in Search of a Human.
The annual international fair will run through March 1 and feature more than 300 events over four days, including discussions, book launches and film screenings.
“The book fair is a place where everyone can find a voice that speaks to them,” said Dovilė Zaidė, president of the Lithuanian Publishers Association. She said this year’s theme invites visitors to pause and discover texts that feel personal.
Organisers say that for the first time the fair will have an official patron, the asset management firm Invalda INVL, and a cultural program partner, Pegasas, the country’s largest bookstore chain. Both partners will host discussions as part of the program.
Special emphasis will be placed on book presentations and live conversations with authors, with more than 100 such events scheduled.
Nearly 40 foreign writers, journalists and book artists are expected to attend.
Among the guests are Polish dissident and Solidarity movement ideologist Adam Michnik; Oliver Moody, head of The Times’ Berlin bureau; German military historian Sonke Neitzel; Taiwanese writer Yu Pei-Yun and artist Zhou Jian-Xin; Jean-Baptiste Andrea, a recipient of the Goncourt Prize; and US crime writer Peter Swanson.
The fair will also host prominent Ukrainian writers and intellectuals, including Oksana Zabuzhko, Maricka Paplauskaitė, Yevheniia Kuznetsova and Vasyl Shkliar.
Authors from Latvia and Estonia traditionally take part as well.
The fair is organised by the Lithuanian Publishers Association, the Lithuanian Association of Related Rights AGATA and the Litexpo centre, with support from the Lithuanian Council for Culture and the Vilnius City Municipality.
Last year, nearly 56,000 people attended the event, which featured more than 320 events.
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