Penza, 13 September 2013. PenzaNews. A Book Fair, dedicated to the 350th anniversary of the city which brought together around 50 representatives of leading Russian publishing houses, began its work in the regional library named after M. Lermontov in Penza on Friday, September 13.

© PenzaNewsBuy the photo

One of the first visitors to the fair was the governor of the Penza region Vasily Bochkarev and the host of the Humanitarian Forum, the chairman of the regional government Yuri Krivov, who noted the importance of participation in this event of the colleagues and visitors not only from the capital but also neighboring Ulyanovsk, Samara, and remote regions, such as Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk and Kaliningrad.

“We will look for answers to questions important for the development of such areas as the Penza region, for the ways of development of the province and try to implement the ideas developed in the land of Penza,” Yuri Krivov said.

According to the head of culture and archive of the Penza region Evgeny Shilov, the Book Fair is one of the main program blocks of the Humanitarian Forum “Province Search” and includes the work of a book-market, a presentation and discussion platform, for which many well-known publicists, writers, and publishing houses of intellectual literature have been invited.

Evgeny Shilov stressed that the main purpose of the Book Fair is not so much getting people to know new books and authors, but drawing attention to reading in general.

“Today many people believe that we have shifted to a new stage of civilization which is characterized above all by predominance of visual information. I think that's partly true. But if we talk about the development of human intelligence, visual information is not enough. Intelligence develops only in the union with the word, and this, of course, is the book. I do not consider the media — magazines, periodicals — because they are quite limited in vocabulary and content, but if we take a good book, it is rich in content and linguistic forms. The book retains its integral role in the development of a person,” Evgeny Shilov added.

“I think we have closely approached a program of promotion of reading in the Penza region. Not working with the book, our society becomes impoverished, poor in mind,” the head of culture and archive added.

According to the organizer of the fair Oleg Rubtsov, what many now believe the crisis of literary culture should be considered as transformation.

“In the regions, the communication channel between the reader and writer, between the reader and the publisher has destroyed. The consumers are practically unaware of how many excellent books are being published, which is why Penza Book Fair includes not only the book trading part, but also a great program of meetings with writers,” he said.

Oleg Rubtsov also noted that a lot of writers have been invited to the event, such as Viktor Erofeev, Mikhail Elizarov, Denis Dragunov, Mariam Petrosyan, Ilya nStogov, journalist Valery Panyushkin and others.

In turn, Evgeny Shilov reminded that the next event in Penza will be sales exposition “The world of books in the land of Penza,” wich is scheduled for November.