Back from Frankfurt

I've just returned from the Frankfurt Book Fair 2026, and I'm still sorting through what I saw, heard, and felt there.

Frankfurt is one of the largest gatherings in the world of people who make books: publishers, authors, translators, agents, and delegations from countries with very different histories and cultures. For a few days the halls fill with a hundred languages, and underneath them all runs a single shared one, which is literature.

The scale of the fair is hard to describe. Endless shelves, packed aisles, a constant hum of conversation. But what stayed with me wasn't the size. It was the people.

The best moments began with a simple introduction and became something more. A conversation about a book turned into a conversation about a country, a childhood, a way of seeing. Strangers showed real curiosity about stories from places they had never been. Some offered advice, some shared hard-won experience, and some simply listened. As a writer who works in both English and Hebrew, I felt that curiosity most strongly. Stories travel, and people want to receive them.

At a time when so much seems to divide us, the fair offered a quiet counterexample. Nobody was trying to win an argument. People were trying to understand one another, and books were the way in. That kind of openness is rarer than it should be, and I'm grateful to have found it there.

I arrived with my books, my ideas, and plenty of hope. I came home with new friendships, promising conversations, a few unexpected encounters, and a much wider sense of what is possible.

Now comes the less glamorous part. There are manuscripts to send, follow-ups to write, and conversations to keep alive long after the badges and lanyards have been packed away. Nothing is guaranteed, and I wouldn't want it to be. Uncertainty is part of the adventure, and the real work of a fair like this happens in the weeks that follow.

My thanks to everyone who took the time to talk with me, whether for ten minutes or an hour. And thank you to the readers who follow this journey and make it worth taking.

The fair is over, but Frankfurt was not a conclusion. It was a beginning, and there is much more to come.