AUTHOR NOTE · NOVEMBER 2026

When books find a voice on the other side

I arrived at the 2026 Monterrey International Book Fair with books I had written alone, and left having heard what other people found in them.

Seeing a full room at the presentation of Ecos de un primer sueño moved me. From where I stood, I could see the people who had set aside time to join me and listen. After so many hours of writing, revising and preparing, there were the words, facing their readers. I could no longer revise them: it was time to share them.

The book signings extended that encounter. Asking a name, writing a dedication, talking for a few minutes. Each copy was beginning a journey I could only glimpse: who would take it home, whether it would be a gift, what had stirred the curiosity of the person holding it.

At the La Carnita Literaria booth, there were many opportunities to meet the public. Some people came looking for a title; others stopped to look at the covers. I was especially grateful to those who let me introduce my work. Amid the bustle of the fair, stopping to listen to an author means giving them something valuable: attention.

Talking about my books excites me, but I am even more interested in what happens afterwards. When someone reads a few lines and shares a brief comment, an impression or a memory, I discover something I could not have anticipated while writing. Sometimes a reader pauses at a sentence I would never have chosen to introduce the book. Or gives it a different meaning, born of their own experience. Those moments make me return to my texts with fresh eyes.

There was also the excitement of radio interviews: sitting at the microphone, hearing a question and finding a way to talk about writing in my own words. As an educator, I am used to explaining things; talking about what I write puts me in a different place. Something personal emerges when I describe where a poem comes from or what led me to publish a book. And on the other side are people I cannot see, but with whom a conversation might begin.

In my work as a civil engineer, I need to measure, review and verify. At the fair, so much of what mattered most was beyond anything I knew how to measure: the interest of someone who lingered a little longer, the generosity of a shared reading, the comment of someone who found something of themselves in my words.

I take with me the joy of the full room, the signed books and the interviews. But above all, I keep thinking about those brief conversations beside a table of books. I arrived ready to explain what I had written. Readers helped me discover what it could mean.

— Ángel Ervey Martínez Rodríguez