The election

In 2009, Pierre Lafitte, along with a group of friends who shared a passion for music and parties, founded the Moque Moque association. Together, they quickly launched Baleapop, a festival that became established in Northern Basque Country for ten years, combining contemporary creation and alternative music with a “DIY” philosophy. He created the online radio station Dia!, which launched in 2019. In the summer of 2020, he opened a temporary art gallery in Saint-Jean-de-Luz dedicated to micro-editions, comics, and artisanal creations. From this initiative, Udada was born, a multinational, multidisciplinary festival. What they love most is discovering and programming artists: they promote murals, organize live performances, and curate exhibitions.

Leonard S. Marcus is one of the world’s leading writers about children’s books and the people who create them. He is the author of Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, Golden Legacy: The Story of Golden Books, and more than 20 other books, including most recently You Can't Say That!: Writers for Young People Talk about Censorship, Free Expression, and the Stories They Have to Tell. Leonard has written frequently for the New York Times Book Review and has been a commentator on radio and television. He is a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum and is Editor at Large at Astra Publishing House, where he publishes picture books and poetry collections for young readers from around the world. Leonard lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Mariana Mendia studied Hispanic literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. For the past thirty years, she has been involved in a wide variety of publishing projects; however, her work has gradually shifted toward the development of illustrated publications, particularly literary works for children and young adults. She has worked as an editor for Fondo de Cultura Económica, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Editorial Santillana, and Ediciones Castillo Macmillan—one of the leading publishers in Mexico’s educational and literary sectors—where she served as manager of Children’s and Young Adult Literature.