Poetry subscription platform wins international Aficionado Award 2024

The Brazilian poetry subscription platform ‘Círculo de Poemas’, an imprint of Fósforo Editora, São Paulo, has won the Aficionado Award 2024. The Aficionado Award is the first international award to promote individuals, organisations and initiatives that are making a lasting difference in the publishing industry. It is awarded by an international publishing community and presented at Frankfurter Buchmesse. Co-founder Rita Mattar will receive the award on behalf of the founding team.

Panel and award ceremony:

When: 17 October 2024, 11.00 am 

Where: Frankfurter Buchmesse – Frankfurt International Stage (Foyer Hall 5.1 / 6.1) 

With: Rita Mattar (Círculo de Poemas), Aleksi Siltala (Siltala Publishing) and Camilla Cottafavi (Feltrinelli). Moderator: Erin Cox (Frankfurter Buchmesse)

The winning project:

Círculo de Poemas is a rotating collaboration project between independent publishers and publishes two books per month. Based on the motto ‘poetry can be for everyone’, it aims to create a community of readers who share a passion for poetry and literature via a monthly subscription and attending local events. Other cooperation partners of the project include bookshops, the Goethe-Institut and restaurants.

The jury's statement: “In Círculo de Poemas we were all agreed about how wonderful it is to see indie publishers working together in this way. The idea of rotating responsibility is simple and genius, as is also the wish to make Círculo self-sustainable in the future. In Círculo we will see a small community growing and becoming stable, perhaps blooming with its potential of 1000 or more subscribers. Creating a strong local community around poetry is in itself irresistible!”

The Aficionado-Award

The international Aficionado Award is dedicated to passionate and committed publishing professionals. It was created to honour outstanding projects and to network, support and promote the personalities behind them. The initiators are Tom Kraushaar (Klett-Cotta, Germany), Michael Gaeb (Literarische Agentur Eggers & Gaeb, Germany), Rebecca Servadio (London Literary Scouting, UK), Aleksi Siltala (Siltala Publishing, Finland) and Camilla Cottafavi (Feltrinelli, Italy). The award is organised in cooperation with, and with the financial support of, Frankfurter Buchmesse and the Salone del Libro di Torino.

In addition to the winning project, the other nominees for 2024 were Alba Donati (Italy) for her bookshop La Libreria Sopra la Penna in a tiny Tuscan village, with its associated literature festival, and Frederike Doppenberg (Netherlands) for her magazine Fifth Wave for independent Russian authors. In 2023, the Aficionado Award went to Lola Shoneyin, founder of the Aké Arts and Book Festival (Nigeria).

Related links:

Aficionado Award https://www.buchmesse.de/en/fellowship-and-grant-programmes/aficionado-award 

Círculo de Poemas https://circulodepoemas.com.br/(opens in a new window) 

Círculo de Poemas on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/circulodepoemas_/(opens in a new window)

Fósforo Editora https://www.fosforoeditora.com.br/(opens in a new window)

Libreria Sopra la Penna https://libreriasopralapenna.it/(opens in a new window)

Fifth Wave Magazine https://fifthwavemagazine.com(opens in a new window)