Summer is approaching and there is optimism in the air. We are all motivated by the prospect of brighter times and a more predictable autumn ahead.

Throughout the pandemic, NORLA has maintained a high level of digital travelling. This spring we built on the experience gained from the numerous webinars we held for industry contacts last year. These webinars allow foreign publishers and editors to meet Norwegian agents. They are also shown NORLA’s films presenting this spring’s selected titles in which the authors themselves talk about their books. Most of the webinars are arranged in close collaboration with Norwegian embassies and consulates, and some are also in collaboration with key translators. This fruitful collaboration is something we are very grateful for.

June and July’s translator of the month is Rosie Hedger, who translates from Norwegian into English. Rosie Hedger was born in Scotland and completed her MA (Hons) in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, as part of which she spent a year at the University of Oslo taking courses in Norwegian literature and researching for her dissertation on contemporary Norwegian fiction. Since completing her studies, Rosie has lived in Sweden and Denmark, and she is now based in the north of England. Her translation of Gine Cornelia Pedersen’s Zero was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2019, and her translation of Agnes Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal won an English PEN Translates Award in 2016. Her translations of Marie Aubert’s Grown Ups and Helga Flatland’s One Last Time are both due out this summer.

The translator’s pastry shop will open on Wednesday 23 June, at 15 (Norwegian time) to translators from Norwegian. It will be an informal, hour-long meeting, held once a month on Zoom, where we will eat something nice together that each participant has baked for themselves.

June sees the celebration of Pride Month worldwide and today is the first day of Oslo Pride, which will take place both in the city and online. On Saturday June 26 there will be a digital parade as well as a boat parade on the Oslo fjord.
At NORLA, we are happy to join in the celebration by sharing a selection of LGBT+ themed books available for children and young adults. Below we have included titles updated from last year’s list made by IBBY Norway (International Board on Books for Young People).
HAPPY PRIDE!

This week The Norwegian Festival of Literature takes place in Lillehammer. And from May 25th to the 28th, NORLA arranged a number of webinars for our international contacts. We are proud to be the Norwegian Festival of Literature’s partner for this year’s innovation Lillehammer Rights.

This week, the Norwegian Literature Festival kicks off in Lillehammer and true to tradition, the festival is also the perfect backdrop for the awarding of literary prizes: The Dobloug Prize, The Booksellers Association’s awards and scholarships, The Norwegian Youth Literature Award (“Uprisen”), and also The Norwegian Fiction Translator Fund Award.

At NORLA, we offer our warmest congratulations to all the winners!

Today is World Bee Day, and at NORLA, we would like to celebrate by sharing a TEDx talk and a podcast with Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, professor in conservation biology and author of the very interesting and amusing book Extraordinary Insects (original title: Insektenes planet).

Her TEDx talk is called “Insects Are Extraordinary. And They May Save Your Life”.
Hear it here (15 mins).

We also recommend the podcast which offers an interview in English (second link, approx. 30 mins), and a reading from the book in German and Norwegian (first link, 44 mins).
Hear it here.

NORLA’s subsidy scheme for export and market initiatives will boost demand, exports, and market development for Norwegian books and authors abroad, The scheme supports the development of good marketing ideas and initiatives for titles which have a strong potential, which contribute to new initiatives or put wind in the sails of ongoing projects with international partners. There are many initiatives being planned – and we are now ready to announce the second round of projects to be awarded grants this year.

Our translator of the month for May is Andreas Donat (b. 1983) from Austria. He is fairly new to the world of translation having started in 2018 and has since then translated Hanne Ørstavik and Roskva Koritzinsky among others. Andreas is also a classical pianist and in the years prior to corona you could sometimes hear him performing at various concert venues around the world. He grew up in Vienna, lived in Oslo for several years, and now lives in Berlin.
Andreas’s work will soon be in the spotlight with Gine Cornelia Pedersen’s Zero (original title: Null) and Hanne Ørstavik’s Ti amo.

Norwegian books travel far and wide and at NORLA, we are always pleased when the books, their authors, illustrators and translators receive well-deserved literary distinctions from abroad.
Here you will find information on literary prizes, awards and nominations that we have noted so far in 2021.

As part of the Norwegian Festival of Literature in Lillehammer, we had been looking forward to welcoming members of the international book trade to a fellowship at the brand new rights centre: Lillehammer Rights. This year’s festival focuses on the Nordic region and we have instead invited Nordic publishers and editors to a number of webinars from May 26-28.

The aim of NORLA’s translation subsidy is to contribute to increasing the number of books from Norway that are translated, published and distributed abroad. The criteria for the translation subsidy have now been reviewed by NORLA’s board and updated accordingly.