Book clubs have quietly become one of Colombia's most interesting cultural exports. What started as a pandemic-era way to fill lockdown hours in Bogotá has matured into a thriving, multi-generational movement — and it's now drawing attention well beyond Latin America.
The scene in Colombia stands out for how seriously these groups take reading. Literatus, a project founded by communicator Federico Baraya Galán, concentrates on the short story, a format chosen deliberately: participants can dissect a complete narrative in a single one-hour session. The club runs across Bogotá, Latin America and Europe, and focuses on the mechanics of craft — pacing, structure, stylistic risk — rather than casual opinions. It regularly brings in living authors, with guests including Fernanda Trias, Piedad Bonnett, María Fernanda Ampuero and Ricardo Silva Romero.
Other groups carry a political edge. Una mujer singular, led by writer María Antonia León, reads exclusively Colombian women writers, past and present, in a deliberate challenge to a male-dominated literary canon. It doubles as a space for intergenerational connection between readers.
There's an economic layer too. Independent bookstores host reading circles to drive foot traffic and build loyal customer bases, and the clubs themselves have become a revenue pipeline for the creative sector. Some require members to buy titles at partner shops; others charge monthly subscriptions or per-session fees that pay curators for their work.
The Colombian boom mirrors a global one. In Europe and North America, book club activity has surged, fuelled largely by Gen Z and #BookTok, where viral video recommendations translate into real-world meetups, library sign-ups and physical book sales. The most successful international groups now run hybrid models — continuous discussion on platforms like Discord or Fable, with in-person sessions in cafés and public spaces — and increasingly centre historically underrepresented voices on their reading lists.
For travellers, this is a genuinely good reason to linger in Bogotá. The city has long had one of Latin America's strongest independent bookstore cultures, and joining a reading circle or attending an author event offers something most tourist itineraries miss: direct contact with the country's literary life. Even without joining a club, browsing the shops that host these communities — and picking up works by Trias, Bonnett or Ampuero before you fly home — is a richer souvenir than most. The broader lesson from the trend applies to travel itself: people everywhere are trading algorithmic scrolling for slow, deliberate, in-person experiences, and Colombia's readers got there first.
