“Breathing is necessary. “Reading is the hell”. VLC organizers have not been very fond of slogans until now, but this ninth edition of the festival (the second in pandemic) claimed a leitmotif that highlights a trend that has been reinforced in recent months: the significant increase in reading habits, that life has given us (finely put). The last edition was held just six months ago, In November of 2020, due to the postponement forced by the situation corona virus of May, It was a festival of resistance that held on tightly to streaming to keep going.. That chapter closed, now they are writing the one about the reconquest, despite not programming theater this year, no cinema, no music, nor to be able to count on international authors, spearhead of the festival. So all the gunpowder is in the established home authors like Victor del Tree, Very kiko, Carlos Zanón o Juan Madrid (who will be awarded the González Ledesma Prize), the malagueña Esther García Llovet, that gave the bell at the beginning of the year with a noir surreal called Fair fat man, and other media, as Pablo Rivero, Toni Alcántara in the series Cuéntame, who is coming to present his third novel, The girls who dreamed of being seen (Sum of Letters) resounding to true crime. Riding the wave of this subgenre noir, VLC Negra will screen an episode of the À punt series in La Nau The dark hour that dissects the most shocking crimes of recent years in the Valencian Community.
This year necessity has been made a virtue and the festival, more than ever, has continued to reinvent contents and formats that are here to stay. For example, Las Black Express, fifteen-minute talks in the style of TED talks that will be offered by six authors on specific topics that they have chosen with complete freedom. Another novelty will be the recording of two live podcasts, one with a series laboratory that will feature the presence of the writer Santiago Díaz, and another with the members of ¡Here we talk about games! And in search of young blood, the collaboration with booktubers and instagramers who will talk to their followers about the novels nominated for this edition's awards, some taken with less than purist tweezers to be able to include them within the noir genre, like the Valencian sales phenomenon Norway. You can now vote! More traditional, reading clubs will connect writers and readers in the city's municipal libraries, at the Empire bookstore, the Book House, Sant Miquel dels Reis and the L'Iber museum, which together with the Center del Carme and the Fnac make up this year's venues, more outdoors than ever. VLC Negra returns outside its usual month to continue promoting reading, whatever color. AU
