Between 25 – 31 May, the Nordic region’s biggest literature festival took place in Lillehammer, and this year’s was bigger than ever! NORLA organised programs both before and during the festival: We arranged a seminar for translators of Norwegian fiction to English, Spanish and Korean – and invited a group of international publishers and scouts to Oslo and Lillehammer in collaboration with the Publishers Association and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition, two groups of German guests – including both journalists and booksellers – visited Norway in connection with the festival. Also participating was a group from Georgia – which was the Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse last year – as well as representatives from the book fair itself. All of these groups took part in an exciting and packed program!

The Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019 presented its extensive cultural programme, the concept for the Guest of Honour Pavilion and the list of authors who will attend the fair. Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess Mette-Marit will travel across Germany on a literary train tour in collaboration with Deutsche Bahn AG. Erika Fatland and Karl Ove Knausgård will speak at the fair’s opening ceremony.

With more than 70 program posts we hope to engage and entertain the German and international audience at the main stage in Norway’s Guest of Honour Pavilion from 16 to 20 October 2019.

May’s translator of the month is the Hungarian Bence Patat who has been working as a technical translator and literary translator for almost twenty years.

From April 26 to 28, the German-Norwegian literature festival “On the way to Frankfurt” was held at Litteraturhuset in Oslo. And the festival was a huge success, with over 5000 people in the attendance!

At NORLA we are happy to welcome four translators to Oslo and a two-week stay at Hotell Bondeheimen. And this spring markes a jubilee, as our guests take part in the popular scheme’s tenth season!
The four translators are:

Ina Kronenberger (German)
Vera-Agnes Pap (Hungarian)
Pluschkat (German)
Kaija Anttonen (Finnish)

In addition to being Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse, Norway was also the focus country at the European Film Market (EFM) at the Berlinalen in February; and in April Norway was the partner-country at the world’s largest jazz trade-fair jazzahead! in Bremen.

At NORLA, we are very happy to be part of “Nordic Books of the Month” – a NordLit campaign promoting Nordic literature!
During the next month we will publish and share reading tips on interesting Nordic books together with our fellow Nordic literature export centres.

April’s translator of the month is Kateřina Krištůfková from the Czech Republic. She is the elected leader of the newly established association for translators of Nordic literature in the Czech Republic: Překladatelé Severu (Czech Translators of the North).

The Leipzig Book Fair, attended by 200,000 visitors, is the largest literary arena in Germany after the Frankfurt Book Fair. Our presence there from 21-24 March was one of the highlights of Norway’s literature program for spring 2019.

On the eve of the London International Book Fair, the New Voices took part in a publisher’s seminar at Free Word Centre in London.

Marianne Kaurin, Jan Kristoffer Dale, Tore Skeie and Bår Stenvik presented themselves and their authorship to an interested audience of British publishers. (See the presentations by clicking on their names).
The seminar was organized by NORLA in collaboration with The Norwegian Embassy in London.

Today, the Norwegian Minister of Culture, Trine Skei Grande, awarded the prestigious 2018 Ministry of Culture’s literary prizes for children and young adult literature published in 2018.
A total of NOK 415,000 were awarded in eight different categories for children’s and YA literature; Best Fiction Book, Best Picture Book, Best Non-fiction Book, First Book Award, Best graphic novel/Cartoon, The Illustration Award, The Translation Award and The Special Award.