For the second consecutive year, the fair will host a journalistic book workshop in collaboration with the Gabo Foundation.

The Gabo Foundation convenes the eighth journalistic book workshop given by Martín Caparrós, Argentine journalist, writer, essayist, and editor, and winner of the King of Spain, Konex and Maria Moors Cabot awards, and the Miguel Delibes National Journalism Award. Registration will be open until March 21. The event will be held from May 29 to June 2, 2023, during the 82nd Madrid Book Fair.

This will be the eighth edition of one of the classic workshops of the Gabo Foundation, an institution of Ibero-American scope, created 27 years ago in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, by journalist, writer, and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez.

Those interested in applying for one of the eight places available must register before March 21 by filling out a registration form.

«The fair presents books, sells books, talk about books and, thanks to the Gabo Foundation, also writes them or, at least, offers the environment and advice to do so.» These are the words of Eva Orúe, director of the Madrid Book Fair. «Some of the books that were the subject of the 2022 edition of this seminar are already in bookstores, or close to them; surely the 23rd edition will be just as interesting,» she added.

In fact, as a result of the workshop also given by Martín Caparrós at the last edition of the Madrid Book Fair, two books have already been published: Crónicas del litio, by Argentine Ernesto Picco, and El tren de Aragua, by Venezuelan Ronna Rísquez. Other works are in the process of publication and will be published during the first half of this year.

Eva Orúe, director of the Madrid Book Fair: «The writer is not an asocial being and seeks advice and support. That is what we offer them at El Retiro».

The journalistic book workshop brings together for five days, from May 29 to June 2, eight journalists and writers who are in the process of writing their work. The activity is developed under the format that García Márquez bequeathed to the Foundation, and in which the participants -around the figure of the master-, have the opportunity to present their projects to share their doubts, seek solutions and rethink their book.

The formula is to the liking of the management of the Madrid Book Fair, since among its objectives is not only the promotion of reading but also writing, «and the Gabo Foundation helps us to achieve this through a system that we find particularly attractive: a group of writers who lock themselves up for a few days, share their texts, read each other, submit to the judgment of their peers and let themselves be guided by a master, Martin Caparros».

More than 50 authors from the region have already passed through this training program and have embarked on what the Argentine master -winner of the King of Spain, Konex, and Maria Moors Cabot awards, and the Miguel Delibes National Journalism Award-, calls «one of the greatest and most stimulating challenges of the profession: to write a non-fiction book». Moreover, to do it in the company because, «as opposed to the widespread idea that writing is a solitary task -which it is, to a large extent-, it is interesting to emphasize that the writer is not an asocial being and that he or she seeks advice and support. That is what we offer them at El Retiro,» added Eva Orúe.

The workshop is part of the Gabo Foundation’s initiatives with Spanish institutions to strengthen the networks of journalists and storytellers in both countries. It was in Spain that Gabo published his first journalistic book, Relato de un náufrago (1970), whose story and context were explored in a podcast produced, 50 years later, by the Gabo Foundation, RTVC, and PRISA Audio’s Pódium Podcast.