The Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri ‘school of booksellers’ returns to Venice, with a half-day conference streaming on January 27.
A week after the news of publisher Achille Mauri’s death, organizers speak of the shock that has accompanied their preparations for next week’s Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri, the “school of booksellers” which on Tuesday (January 24) will inaugurate its 40th edition, a four-day sequence of events.
On Friday, January 27, the program changes from its training-says mode to a conference context, and the international book publishing community is invited to watch this half-day program through a live stream from San Giorgio, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CET (8:30 to 11:30 a.m. GMT). Registration, free of charge, is available here. We have more information on this for you below.
Mauri was 83, and his decline was rapid, leaving the team coping both with event arrangements and what they quietly call “the surprise.” The loss of the personality whose insights and charm welcomed delegates in the past has injected an element of somber reflection into #UEM40 and its return–after two years of digital conference sessions–to Venice’s Fondazione Giorgio Cini in the former San Giorgio Monastery.
The overarching theme of the coming events, however—Leggere il cambiamento, “Interpreting Change”—fits well into a contemplative mode.
The still ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the program’s usual journey to Venice, of course hit Italy very hard in 2020, making that market the first epicenter outside China to experience the full brunt of a pathogen before vaccines were available.
The country, as of January 12 this year, had lost a total 185,993 citizens to COVID, and on the date of its highest daily death toll, December 3, 2020, 993 patients would die. On the other hand, by this month, some 84 percent of the Italian population had been vaccinated, according to Statista’s research—a rate of vaccination that many other international publishing markets can only envy.
For further details: Publishing Perspectives, January 18, 2023. publishingperspectives.com/2023
