Polish Poets at the Ledbury Poetry Festival

2nd – 5th July
Dublin, Ledbury, London

LAF is taking three of the Six Polish Poets published by Arc Publications on tour. Anna Piwkowska, Darius Suska and Maciej Wozniak will be reading at the EU House in Dublin on the 2nd of July. They will then be appearing at the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Sunday 5th of July. The tour is organised by Literature Across Frontiers in cooperation with the Polish Book Institute, the Ledbury Poetry Festival, the Polish Cultural Institute in London and the Polish Embassy in Dublin.

Poetry Unlimited at Poesiefestival Berlin

1st – 5th July
Berlin

LAF partners up with Literaturwerkstatt to kick off the project Poetry Unlimited, an itinerant festival of experimental poetry. The festival pays homage to the key experimental poetry directions of the past while taking poetry into new realms of interaction with other art forms and new technology. Poetry Unlimited is produced in partnership with the Latvian Literature Centre, Literatturwerkstatt and Propost. More information will be available on the Literaturwerkstatt website ww.literaturwerkstatt.org.

LAF partners visit the Bucharest Book Fair

18th – 21st June
Bucharest

The institutional partners of the LAF platform will hold their next meeting in Bucharest on the invitation of the National Book Centre of Romania. Representatives of the partner organisations will also meet with Romanian publishers of literature in translation and promote their activities at the Bucharest Book Fair.

Women's Translation Workshop, Slovenia

7th – 14th June
Dane, Ljubljana

In cooperation with the Center for Slovenian Literature and the Living Literature Festival in Ljubljana, LAF is holding a translation workshop with some of Europe’s most interesting and exciting female writers: poet Anna T. Szabó (Hungary), poet Ioana Ieronim (Romania), poet Mirela Sula (Strugaj) (Albania), poet Monica Pavani (Italy), short story writer Suzana Tratnik (Slovenia) and poet Thórunn Valdimarsdóttir (Iceland).

The workshop is facilitated by Suzana Tratnik and Brane Mozetič from the Center for Slovenian Literature. This meeting of minds, languages and voices will take place in the village of Dane in Western Slovenia, where on Thursday the 11th June at 6pm there will be a reading at Reading at Sežana Library (www.sez.sik.si). And on Friday the 12th and Saturday the 13th of June at 8pm the writers will read at the Living Literature Festival in Ljubljana (www.skuc.org).

Turkish Literature Translation Workshop

1st – 11th June
Cunda Island, Turkey

Bogazici University and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Turkey in partnership with Literature Across Frontiers develop the Cunda Workshop for translators of Turkish Literature. Twenty participants mainly translating into English discuss and translate during this intensive encounter between translators and authors.

Festival of the European Short Story

1st - 3rd June - Zagreb, Croatia
4th - 6th June - Zadar, Croatia

At this year's festival, Literature Across Frontiers continues its focus on writing and conflict with a debate between two writers who believe in peace and dialogue: Alex Epstein (Israel) and Samir El-Youssef (Lebanon/UK). On Monday 1st June at 6pm, at the Booksa, Martićeva 14 D, in Zagreb.

The Welsh author Rachel Trezise will also be appearing at the festival with LAF support. A full programme will be available online in May. 

Athens International Literary Festival

29th – 31st May
Dasein philosophy cafe
Solomou 12, Exarheia

This is the second year of this growing literary festival in Athens and LAF is delighted to be a partner. The programme includes readings and events focussing on literature in relation to science, cinema, history, art and biography.

Thessaloniki International Book Fair

28th - 31st May
Helexpo, Hall 13, Ritsos Room

This year LAF will be holding a collective stand representing organisations from the Basque Country, Catalonia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Wales. On Thursday 28th of May LAF will be holding three events celebrating the collaborative and imaginative diversity of European writing: The Double Dream Of Writing: two acts between poetry and fiction, with Christos Chryssopoulos and Haris Vlavianos, 1989 – 2009 Twenty Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall with With Nora Ikstena (Latvia), Svetislav Basara (Serbia), Gustav Murin (Slovakia) and Dan Lungu (Romania) and Stories of Something Former: Literature of the Past Tense at the Underground Entefktirio.

Bookworld International Prague Book Fair / Svět knihy 2009

14th – 17th May
Industrial Palace, Prague

Partner organisations from the following countries will be represented at the LAF collective stand S204: The Basque Country, Catalonia, Estonia, Finland, Galicia, Flanders-Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Turkey and Wales.

At this year's fair LAF is co-organising the programme 27 from 27 / Europe in Literature - Literature in Europe which has been granted the status of Official Event of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union. In a series of events which also look back at the twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, writers from EU member and candidate countries will be presenting their work and taking part in discussions on life in a united Europe, questions of identity and diversity in European literatures, and recent trends on the European literary scenes. Among the authors attending the fair are Nicolas Ancion, Saskia de Coster, Georgi Gospodinov, Arnon Grunberg, Ingo Schultze and Elif Shafak.

Read more about the book fair programme at www.bookworld.cz or click below for LAF events 

London International Book Fair

20th – 22nd April
Earls Court 

Visit the LAF collective stand (V405) with participation from the Hungarian Book Foundation, Latvian Literature Centre and Directorate of Books and Libraries, Portugal.

Passa Porta Festival

26th - 29th March
Brussels
www.passaporta.be

Find a radical and imaginative response to global issues at this year’s Passa Porta Festival. LAF is cooperating on Remapping the World – a multi-genre experience featuring ten authors (including Nawal el Sadawi, Elif Shafak and Joseph O’Neil) and promoting  European Constitution in Verse presented by The Brussels Poetry Collective and over 40 writers, at the Prague Book World book fair in May.

Abu Dhabi Book Fair

17th – 22nd March
Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Company

Over the past two years, LAF has established contacts outside Europe in order to facilitate literary exchange and mutual promotion of literature between the countries of its European partners and countries in the region of the Southern Mediterranean and the Middle East. This will be LAF’s third visit to the Abu Dhabi Book Fair where we will meet with Arab publishers and promote the translation subsidies offered by our partners.

Twenty EU countries with their translation subsidy schemes will be represented at the LAF stand.

LAF Director Alexandra Büchler speaks in the seminar “Spotlight on Rights” on 18th March.

Czech Poets Tour

11th March 1pm, Manchester Central Library, Manchester
11th March 7pm, Blue Sky Café, Bangor
12th March 7pm, Foyles Bookshop, London

Arc Publications’ New Voices from Europe and Beyond series presents Six Czech Poets, the third volume in the series of bilingual anthologies brings the work of contemporary poets from Europe and beyond to a wider English-language readership. The series aims to keep a finger on the 'here and now' of international contemporary poetry. Viola Fischerová, Petr Halmay and Pavel Kolmačka will be in Manchester, Bangor and London to present work from the book.

Bards in Brussels

3rd March 8pm
19.15pm for a drinks reception
Passaporta International House of Literature,
Brussels
www.passaporta.be

Poets from Wales, Scotland, England and Ireland will be gathering on St. David’s Day eve for a special celebration of literature at the Passa Porta International Literature Centre in Brussels.

Poets will be performing their work through the medium of English, Gaelic and Welsh (with translations on-screen where available and appropriate). The guests will discuss identity and belonging, living and writing through so-called minority languages and the plurality of literary traditions and practices in different cultures and tongues.

The evening will be chaired by Robyn Marsack, Director of the Scottish Poetry Library and the visiting poets will be Ifor Ap Glyn (Wales) Aonghas Macneacail (Scotland) Antony Dunn (England) and Damian Gorman (Northern Ireland).

The event is being organised by the Welsh Assembly Government, the Scottish Government, the British Council and the Scottish Poetry Library. LAF is pleased to be a partner in this exciting event.

Art & Conflict Workshop

23rd – 28th February
Manchester, United Kingdom

The Art & Conflict workshop will bring together a group of artists from the Middle East, Turkey, Morocco and different European countries to address the role of art and culture in conflict situations through discussion and collaborative work. Among the workshop participants are Isa Andreu (Spain/Catalonia), Mariane Cosserat (France/Norway), Saïd Ait El Moumen (Morocco), Secil Yaylali (Turkey), Rotem Ritov (Israel), and the Manchster-based artists Kate Feld, Heidi Schaefer and Jo Richardson.

Invited to join them for a one-day round-table discussion are practitioners who have experience with conflict-zone projects: Samir El-Youssef, writer and co-author with Etgar Keret of the highly acclaimed book Gaza Blues; Aisling O’Beirn, artist (Northern Ireland); Claudia Eipeldauer, Wochenklauser (Vienna), and Toyah Hunting from the Ask Sarajevo project.

Stories From the Heart of Europe - Launch

28th – 30th January,
Cairo and Alexandria

LAF continues its project - European Literature Today - with an event organised in cooperation with the Centre for Information on Slovak Literature. We help celebrate the launch of a new anthology of fiction in Arabic translation Stories from the Heart of Europe, edited by Ina Martinova and published by the Sphinx Agency.

The book is a project of the Centre and Ministries and includes contributions from Jan Balabán and  Stanislav Beran (Czech Republic), Margit Halász  and  Szilárd Podmanitzky (Hungary), Pawel Huelle  and  Daniel Odija (Poland), Karol Horváth  and  Ursula Kovalyk (Slovakia). It is edited by Pál Békés and Ina Martinová (chief editors), with Ivory Rodriguez and Piotr Marciszuk. The authors and editors will visit Cairo and Alexandria to launch this landmark anthology of short stories.

Writers’ Chain Project – India

14th - 24th January
Neemrana and Jaipur

LAF is facilitating literary creativity and cultural exchange in India this January, bringing together Indian and British writers at the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2009 as part of he Writers’ Chain Project. Indian writers Sampurna Chattarji, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Sivasankari and Udaya Narayana Singh will meet four UK poets Meg Bateman, Matthew Hollis, Mererid Hopwood and Gearóid Mac Lochlainn for a week at the Neemrana Fort-Palace Hotel to discover and explore each other’s work through translation. The workshop is facilitated by Alexandra Büchler who will also present the authors at the festival on 21st January 5-6pm, (Baithak).
The Writers' Chain Project is managed by Wales Literature Exchange in association with Siyahi Agency on behalf of Wales Arts International.