Iran Cultural Fairs Institute is representing the country at the South Korean fair as it did in previous years, IRNA wrote.

Iran’s publishing industry, the top authors and works in the field of children and adolescents in English, Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) and the Books from Iran website (icfi.ir), including 1,900 book titles along with their English abstracts, are being introduced at the fair.

Also, the institute has uploaded video clips about the introduction of the TIBF.

The book fair provides an opportunity for professional publishers around the world through specialized scholarships to strengthen international publishing exchanges.

According to koreatimes.co.kr, various book seminar and exhibitions on current issues such as COVID-19, gender and the environment will be held in bookstores and art spaces on the sidelines.

Under the theme “XYZ: Entanglement,” which has been postponed once due to the pandemic, 198 publishers are participating in book exhibitions with 280 books exhibited online and 800 books on show in physical locations, while some 200 authors will take part in discussions and lectures in some 40 programs, some of which will be released on YouTube.

The Korean Publishers Association, the organizer of the event, said, “This year’s SIBF seeks to offer an experience that traverses the online and offline worlds with books as intermediaries that connect the two worlds … (the theme) will bring them face to face with diverse contemporary topics including the Anthropocene, climate change, millennials, feminism and crime.”

Specifically, in the opening session, Yonsei University culture professor, Lee Sang-gil, Yonsei University anthropology professor, Seo Bo-kyung, Yonsei University ecology professor, Kang Ho-jeong and Kyung Hee University physics professor, Kim Sang-woo, talked on the theme of “aesthetics of entanglement and ethics on coexistence.”

Lectures on the millennial generation will also include the key themes of labor, minorities and feminism. Discussions and lectures on the science fiction genre by authors and experts will be presented while YouTube and Naver talks will feature authors and experts from overseas such as Tony Cho, director of Slow Futures Lab; Peggy Ju and Ivy Lee, directors of Or Bookstore in Taiwan; Shie Okabe, a director of Utrecht in Japan; Martina Barth, key account manager at Frankfurt Book Fair and Wedha Stratesti Kompas Gramedia in Indonesia.