In late April, NORLA had the pleasure of visiting Montreal, Canada, in connection with the Blue Metropolis literature festival, where the authors Morten A. Strøknes, Torkil Damhaug and Heidi Sævareid were guests. At the same time, NORLA organized a book trade meeting, about Norwegian and Canadian literature, in collaboration with the Norwegian Embassy in Canada, NORLA’s sister organisation Livres Canada Books, and the Blue Metropolis Festival.

Our translator of the month for May is Leonardo Pinto Silva, from Brazil.

April has been an eventful month. Some of the highlights were the visit from the Frankfurt Book Fair, the press conference where the project’s new partners were presented and the jury meetings for evaluating the incoming design proposals for the Guest of Honour Pavilion. May will include visits from publishers and a press trip in connection with the Norwegian Festival of Literature in Lillehammer and further development of the literary program.

In connection with the announcement of the Literature Go Global program an information meeting was held on April 19, for Norwegian literary agents and rights managers at NORLA.

Literature Go Global (Litteratur ut i verden) is an export and competence program for literary agents. It aims to contribute to increased Norwegian literature exports and strengthen the Norwegian agencies and the book industry’s competitive powers internationally. The program is a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture, Innovation Norway and NORLA.

Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, attended and presented the book fair as a venue for international rights trading. Afterwards Margit Klingen Daams, head of cultural and creative industry at Innovation Norway, presented the Literature Go Global program, and the application process.

There was a high attendance and good dialogue concerning the program after the presentation, and many interesting questions from the hall.

In 2019, Norway will be Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest and most important meeting place for literature. The project has been broadly supported by both public and private funding, it recently gained several new partners and is now almost fully financed.

Today, NORLA had the pleasure of welcoming four new translators to Oslo for the eighth season of our translators hotel at Hotell Bondeheimen.

The four translators are:
Dana Caspi (Hebrew)
Elke Ranzinger (German)
Sanda Tomescu Baciu (Romanian)
Daniela Mrázová (Czech).

We look forward to spending the next two weeks in their company!

Our translator of the month for April is Jelena Ratsjinskaja from Russia.

The Guest of Honour pavilion is the most visually important part of The Frankfurt project. In January, NORLA and DOGA announced an open architecture competition for the pavilion’s design. 66 proposals were approved for further consideration, and in early April the jury met for the first time.

We invite you to take a closer look at our selected titles for the spring of 2018 here.

Innovation Norway is launching a new export program in cooperation with NORLA, which will assist literary agents in selling more Norwegian literature abroad.

As part of the government’s commitment to the cultural and creative industries, Innovation Norway has been commissioned to implement an export program for Norwegian literary agents in cooperation with NORLA. Literature Go Global (Litteratur ut i verden) will contribute to strengthening Norwegian literature’s competitiveness in international markets; building solid agencies that can represent Norwegian authors internationally; and make use of the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair, as a strategic arena for selling Norwegian literature.

We are most fortunate to now have Janicken von der Fehr as project coordinator in NORLA. She is responsible for the program, “Literature Go Global” (in Norwegian: “Litteratur ut i verden”, a collaboration between Innovation Norway and NORLA aimed at increasing Norwegian literary agents’ foreign right sales.
Janicken has long experience from the book industry, with a background as marketing manager and editor of translated fiction in Pax Forlag.
We welcome Janicken!

Last week, the international book industry was gathered in Leipzig – and the Norwegian presence was the largest ever! 13 Norwegian authors met their readers at dozens of events, NORLA hosted a translation seminar, and the starting gun was fired for our German bookstore strategy in the build up to Norway as Guest Of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019.

Below is a selection of photos from some of the many highlights at this year’s book fair in Leipzig. We look forward to more!

Read more (in German) in Börsenblatt.