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.

We at NORLA are proud and happy to present our selected titles for spring: 33 wonderful fiction and non-fiction books for both adults and children/young adults.

Find your favourites here

Translator of the Month for March is Reiko Hidani who translates into Japanese. She’s in the news because her translation of Steffen Kverneland’s Munch has been nominated for Japan’s The Best Translation Award. She has also translated the recently published book What is Economy?, aimed at children and young people and written by Gunhild J. Ecklund.

In this annual exhibition publishers from all around the world can show their current titles on the Guest of Honour. The exhibition “Books on Norway” in the Guest of Honour pavilion, with about 500 – 1,000 titles, collects translated Norwegian literature as well as books about the Guest of Honour. I.e. politics, culture, language, history and society.

It’s 8 March today and to mark the occasion of the International Women’s Day we are happy to share a thought-provoking text about feminism written by author Marta Breen:

In 2016, I wrote the book 60 damer du skulle ha møtt (60 Women You Should Know About) together with my partner in crime, illustrator Jenny Jordahl. It was a graphic novel about Norwegian female pioneers: the first Norwegian feminists, the first woman to become a professor, the first woman to become a priest and so on. Both Jenny and I are fascinated by such stories and not least by the courage of these women.

Leipziger Buchmesse is an important venue for encounters between writers and their readers – and a unique arena for cosplay. In connection to Siri Pettersen’s Raven Rings trilogy we organised a cosplay competition in Norway. Now the winner has been selected.

At NORLA, we are looking forward to next week’s Translated Days festival (“Oversatte dager”), at the House of Literature (Litteraturhuset) in Oslo.
From Thursday February 28th through Saturday, March 2nd there will be a myriad of translation-related events and entry is free. Most events are held in Norwegian.

NORLA will be hosting two events:

Friday March 1: at 13-13.45: Ut og selge bøker

Saturday, March 2: at. 12-12.45: Da Gleden med skjeden ble til The Wonder Down Under

The complete festival programme is available (in Norwegian) here

The Translator of the Month for February is the comparative literary scholar, editor and translator Johanna Domokos. She is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts at Károli University in Budapest, and the coordinator of the Translation and Book Production Laboratory at the University of Bielefeld’s Faculty of Language and Literature. Together with her students – who studied Sámi language just for the projects- she published about a dozen books of Sámi and Nordic literature in German, English. For the 2019 Bookf Fair in Frankfurt together with Chsritine Schlosser and Michael Riessler they publish the first comprehensive anthology of Sami poetry translated into German. Their work is supported by NORLA.

We look forward to all the meetings and experiences ahead!
There are many highlights ahead, both in Norway and abroad, in our Guest of Honour year at the Frankfurter Buchmesse.
Below we have listed some of the activites that will take place in the months to come.