The novelties of Síllable Editores in the FilBo 2022

The Bogotá International Book Fair brings together once again the best of independent publishing in Colombia. Located in Hall 17 of Corferias, there are several publishers who exhibit their projects. Among those from Medellín, Sílaba Editores, the label directed by Lucía Donadío, brings its entire catalog and presents its most recent publications. A collection of poems by Mónica Quintero, a new book by Juan Manuel Roca, a collection of columns by Ana Cristina Restrepo, and the most recent title by María Mercedes Andrade, among other books.

The publishing house was founded in 2009, by Donadío and, since 2011, Alejandra Toro Murillo has joined her as an editorial partner. Since its inception, they have sought to link authors and readers from all over the world through their books, ensuring high quality in both content and graphics, giving special importance to the publication and promotion of Colombian authors, respecting and caring for the processes of each of their works.

Sílaba's vision, as can be seen on its website, is to be a solid publishing company with a catalog of works of depth in content and diversity in its genres, that is a leader in the sector, not only because of the material quality of its books, but also because of the actions to promote writers — regardless of gender, creed, race or geography — and culture, based on the promotion of reading, writing and the development of the publishing sector itself.

Currently, they publish titles of short stories, novels, essays, poetry, journalism, children's literature, ancestral tradition and other hybrid genres. Here are some of the most recent ones:

Maybe five o'clock, Monica Quintero.

“The first poems I read by Mónica Quintero, many years ago, spoke of a “he” loved and lost forever. A while later her name appeared: Eduardo, her father murdered when she had not yet completed her second year of life. This loss is the common thread of much of this book, and the realization of the loneliness that followed.

Other poems explore the poet's place in the world, in the privacy of her room, in her bed, with her cat, in living with the Other, at work, while studying and going to dance classes, when she kneads bread and bakes cakes. It is as if he made an inventory of the feelings and objects that make up his daily life. The atmosphere that identifies the book is a constant of loneliness and unrest. There are poems about the emptiness left by the beloved when he leaves; others in which he names confinement, despair, loneliness, illness as an imminent risk that awaits outside the house in times of pandemic. Here death takes a less metaphorical, more real, more external form.

There are also texts about the city as a beloved and feared space, about Spanish as the language in which poetry is made; others that describe reality as a set of objects that give us the certainty we need to walk through life. They are the multiple voices of the poet who has built a world of her own” - Lucia Donadío.

Self-portrait. An allegory of journalism, Ana Cristina Restrepo.

Yolanda Reyes says, on the back cover, that the columns of this book are organized around several chapters — “Feminism and Gender”; “Armed Conflict and Violence in Colombia”; “The Journalism”; “Colombian Politics”; “Literature”; “Childhood and Education”; “Religiosity”; “Sketches and Characters”; and “Various” — and it doesn't look like any by chance, but rather the result of deliberate work, of having chosen those pillars to bring together the office of having an opinion for so many years and of making “a crowd speak”. The thread that ties the texts is that “universal collective bond”, according to Restrepo's words, which makes us witnesses and mourners to all those people and those stories that opinion columnists don't usually, or don't use to, deal with. Through the exercise of scrutinizing what is beyond the obvious and observing the small details of life without settling for repeating their librettos, but also not passing by them as if they didn't matter, Restrepo's journey places us in front of those other possible worlds that deserve to be told.

I would have wanted to call myself fire, Maria Mercedes Andrade

The author of this book uses poetic prose, a restful, reflective, self-critical language. The characters, mostly women, are expressed in dialogues with themselves, in monologues I would have wanted to call me fire is a book that uses poetic prose, a restful, reflective, self-critical language. Its characters, mostly women, are expressed in dialogues with themselves, in interior monologues, in conversations in the void, in dreams that are confused with wakefulness, in remembrances of a past that can be real or the product of imagination. This intimacy is reflected in the narrative of situations as dissimilar and stark as the anguish of a girl who asks her mother to protect her from that “monster” who arrives at five o'clock to steal pieces of her innocence; or the restless sadness of an Eve who contemplates the corpse of her Adam, that lover-husband-son, who returned to the dust from which he was taken; or the domesticated madness in which a woman who is obsessed with cleaning her apartment slowly falls, perhaps to conjure up the boredom of reality that awaits her outside her doors.

“I would have wanted to call myself fire is a sum of requiems, a swarm, better, of nostalgia or duels. With this new version of the book, which improves what could not be better, that restores an unrepeatable ability to articulate our daily strangeness, which remembers that humor is also given word for word and puts on stage an eroticism that comes from death and returns to it, it is clear that we are lucky to have in our hands prose and the narrative of a great poet” - Ricardo Silva Romero.

“You can think that the women on these pages reveal themselves as if in a photo album. But be careful! Each woman, in her urn of words, generates a shock in the reader when she discovers her essences, her clothes and environments. In this careful gallery, language, aesthetic substance, and the powerful miracle of Juan Manuel Roca's proposal are amazed. The depth of his poetry convinces us that we are even capable of “washing water, which is like washing away the liquidity of time, like playing the harp of rain” or of “sewing a button to the wind”. And they parade, as newly invented, Hellen Keller, La Joplin, Bettina Brentano, Sister Josefa de Castillo, Ophelia, Scherezada, Alicia. The tribute to her is touching, to María Mercedes Carranza who “when she looks out the window she finds that the landscape has been stolen.”

In this splendid collection, other sweet women vibrate with the worst wounds of love; some witches and gypsies and those who become statues of salt. I want for myself the smell of Picasso's women, or those of Chagall who “always keep their balso wings in a violin case.” There is something subversive about Roca's poetic women: they make you want to mess up the world, and as a true sorceress, to seize “a role of justice, a benefactor and healer, as a conspirator and not infrequently as a guide or priestess” - Lina María Pérez Gaviria.

Sílaba Editores will be present throughout the fair at stand 1513, inside Hall 17.

KEEP READING: