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Melinda Palacio

An exciting multicultural literature event takes place this weekend in Mesilla, New Mexico – the 14th Annual Border Book Festival . Started in 1995 by a group of writers, artists and community people committed to celebrating literature and the art of storytelling in the southern United States-Northern Mexico border region, the Border Book Festival began as a one day book fair and has since turned into a major literary festival, and resulted in the foundation of The Cultural Center de Mesilla.

Here are a few words from the festival director, Denise Chavez:

“We believe that literature and the arts can bridge the many boundaries –– racial, ethnic, generational, cultural, socio-economic, and gender-based –– that divide our community. Ours is a grassroots organization that impacts its community by offering programs that are blueprints of positive communication, interaction and connection between people in our borderland region.”

In conjunction with the yearlong events held at the Cultural Center de Mesilla, the Border Book Festival now brings the best of international literature, literacy and storytelling (with a focus on Mexican and Latin American writers) to audiences in the borderland region, including cities and towns in West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico.

From April 18-20 the historic Mesilla, New Mexico town plaza and surrounding sites will become the focal point of the festival, brimming with events for children and their families. The theme this year is “Return.” “A return to community, a return to family and the things that made us start the festival and the things we love about living here,” says Chavez. ” We want to bring the best of the world to where we are and take our energy out to the rest of the world. With this year’s theme we have invited extraordinary writers and artists who tell and sing the story of our world.” Participating writers and artists such as Cristina García, Quincy Troupe, Perla Batalla, Amy Costales, Xavier Garza, Alex Espinosa, Adalucía Quan and more will offer panels, workshops and readings throughout the festival and will take part in school outreach visits in the days leading up to the festival.

Special themed-tents will be set up in the plaza and offer free events for all. In the “Tent of Wonders”, for instance, children’s authors and storytellers Amy Costales, Adalucía Quan and Sudeshna Sengupta (festival poster and bookmark artist) will be telling all kinds of stories, from places far and near.

The “Lucha” tent, a bona fide wrestling ring, will feature “Lucha for Literacy,” where the audience will be able to see famous
Mexican wrestlers and listen to readings by author Xavier Garza,  Griselda “La RaNa” Muñoz, recognized slam poet and Osvaldo Ogaz, a  Mexican lucha poet.

“Libros y Más,” the festival trade show (one of New Mexico’s longest running book trade shows and one of very few in the larger region) will offer great selection of books and other literary goodies, but the festival organizers also thought of a little something anyone can take home for free: beautiful bookmarks with quotes from each artist. “These bookmarks will give beauty in a tangible way, and with corazón,” says Chavez. Indeed an idea (and a festival) full of heart.

Regular readers of the Penguin blog will remember my yearning for legwarmers and leotards when Puffin visited the Brit School of performing arts late last year. We were scouting for talent, and found it, casting brilliant young actress Chloe St. Clair Stannard as the eponymous Sara in Melvin Burgess’ latest paperback Sara’s Face. The novel is a gritty thriller about a young girl, desperate for fame and obsessed with plastic surgery.
Today we’ve launched the first of eight mini Sara’s Face ‘webisodes’ starring Chloe on Penguin’s teen site www.spinebreakers.co.uk. As far as we know, no publisher’s tried this before. Sure, we’ve all seen snazzy online trailers but this project’s just a little bit different.
In effect, Spinebreakers.co.uk is broadcasting a mini drama-series, gradually revealing a story which both stands alone, and enhances what’s in the novel.
Much of the book consists of transcripts from Sara’s vlog. She’s always recording herself, always creating new versions of Sara to present to the camera. Melvin worked with an experienced director to adapt these so that they were suitable to use as scripts for film shorts.

But teenagers are used to myriad extras, be they bonus features on dvds or the option to customise their mii to allow them to wander off into other peoples’ games. Melvin also wrote some brand new and exclusive material, which doesn’t appear anywhere in the book, to give readers/viewers an extra insight into the story.
According to Melvin, writing on the timesonline’s book site this morning, adapting his words from page to, well, webpage, wasn’t easy. But as each new webisode is broadcast Sara, and her destructive hunger for fame, become bigger, better, and even more believable. Here at Penguin, we’re sure the challenge will pay off. And spinebreakers (any story-surfing, web-exploring, word-loving, day-dreaming, reader/writer/artist/thinker between the ages of 13 and 18, in case you were wondering) can also enter a competition to win a state of the art DV camera by uploading their own video-rant about fame here.

Jodie Mullish, Publicity Manager, Puffin

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