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In 2019 Norway will be Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Norwegian literature abroad will become increasingly visible leading up to the Guest of Honour year, and this applies to other book fairs and festivals in Germany and internationally. This year, Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette-Marit will visit the Leipzig Book Fair, as ambassador for Norwegian literature abroad. A total of 13 Norwegian authors will meet their German readers there! The Norwegian program can be found at the bottom of the page.

What does literature do for its readers? Good literature opens both hearts and doors. To quote Olav H. Hauges most famous poem, It is that dream: “that one morning we’ll glide into a cove we didn’t know.” We dream of something similar for Norwegian literature. Through our project – Norway as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019 – we want Norwegian literature to open hearts and doors for its foreign readers.

The Norwegian foreign missions have an important role in the Frankfurt project. The Embassy in Rome is one of the foreign missions who are doing their part to put Norwegian literature on the international agenda.

NORLA is collaborating with Talent Norway and The Norwegian Publishers’ Association, on the talent development programme, New Voices.

The idea is that engagement with foreign business and readers will contribute to an awareness of, and open up new perspectives on, the participant’s own authorship. NORLA will also make provisions so that the programme can contribute towards new international opportunities and make the participants better equipped to present their books internationally over a long-term.

In 2019, Norway will be the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The project is Norway’s largest commitment to cultural-export, ever. As part of the Guest of Honour project, NORLA, in cooperation with The Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture (DOGA), will launch an open architecture competition for the design of an indoor pavilion, which will be 2300 sqm. The competition was announced January 12 2018.

Now that things have calmed down after the Frankfurt Book Fair we are busy harvesting the fruits of a hectic week of meetings, idea development and establishing collaborations in preparation for Frankfurt 2019. In just a year’s time it will happen: Norway will take over the role as Guest of Honour after Georgia and we will embark on the most important year ever in the history of the export of Norwegian literature.

When you visit Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time, it’s handy to go along with colleagues who’ve already been there before. And it’s particularly handy to be there with colleagues who are very tall or who dash around in colourful, polka-dotted coats that make them easy to spot in a crowd. Because the site of the fair is just as enormous as everybody told you, it’s full to the brim with publishing people from all over the world – and the tempo is higher than you could ever have imagined.

One important aim when Norway is guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2019 will be the promotion and highlighting of Norwegian children’s and YA literature – which is among the best we have to offer!
NORLA has set up a brainstorming group to help us come up with great ideas about what we can and should do to make as much as possible out of the whole event; it will be holding its inaugural meeting today!

The participants are:
Kristin Jobraaten (Ena publishing), Taran L. Bjørnstad (NBU, Norwegian Writers For Children), Birgitte Eek (NBI, The Norwegian Institute for Children’s Books), Harald Rosenløw Eeg, Bjørn F. Rørvik and Stian Hole. Heading the group is NORLA’s Andrine Pollen, Coordinator Literary Programme Frankfurt 2019.

We are looking forward to cooperating with this great group and establishing wonderful ideas for the guest of honour program for children and young adults.

Foreign publishers have requested a comprehensive website containing information in English about Norwegian titles. In accordance with the objectives of the Frankfurt project, NORLA has responded to this challenge and created the website Books from Norway.

As of today, only 452 days remain until 1 January 2019. Starting on this day, Norway has Guest of Honour status in connection with the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019. Throughout the entirety of 2019 Norwegian literature and culture will be spotlighted in Germany. How we look forward to this!

Week 37 was the week for Norwegian literary events in New York. On Thursday 14 October, Norwegian authors were introduced to American publishers in the residence of the Norwegian consulate general. There was standing room only when, one by one, Cecilie Enger, Nina Lykke and Vigdis Hjorth took the floor in front of a fantastic view of Manhattan and the East River.

We are very much looking forward to a packed Autumn, the highlight being Frankfurter Buchmesse. From then on we will officially be Guest of Honour! We are also looking forward to visits in Norway from German booksellers; putting the final touches to our literature and cultural programs; and travelling far and wide to promote Norwegian literature and art as part of the Frankfurt project.

Last year, NORLA collaborated with Talent Norge and the Norwegian Publishers Association on the New Voices development programme. Recruiting new authors and promoting new literary voices abroad are important aims of the Frankfurt 2019 initiative. New Voices will create a space where parts of Norway’s rich literary undergrowth can be made visible, giving a boost to authors who are on the verge of an international breakthrough. A group of 4-6 new writing voices will take part in the programme every six months.

This past spring has been perhaps the most labour-intensive in NORLA’s history. A great deal has happened – particularly when it comes to Norway’s role as guest of honour at Frankfurt 2019:

The Frankfurt team was set up on 1 March, with a project manager, a coordinator for the literary programme and a coordinator for the cultural programme. And the first thing they focused on was presenting a broad range of Norwegian literature for translation to relevant publishers, and setting in motion potential collaborative projects for the cultural programme.

Twelve international publishers from Germany, the United Kingdom and USA visited Oslo May 2 ​– 5.
It was a true pleasure to welcome our guests to Norway, and to show them some of the best literary voices Norway has to offer!​​

All of four editors of Karl Ove Knausg​å​rd​’​s books were invited to attend the opening of the Munch exhibition «​Towards the Forest​» (​«​Mot skogen​»​​) which is curated by Knausg​å​rd.
The guests also visited Norwegian publishing houses and literary institutions. In addition to meeting with Norwegian authors, they also met editors and literary agents for a full three days.​​

We currently have positions available on the project team for Norway as Guest of Honour country at the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair. We are looking for a head of PR and a project assistant for this unique international cultural initiative.
Applications close on 1 June.

More information in Norwegian available here.

Read all about the Norwegian Guest of Honour-project here.

Norway will be Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019.

Programme for NORLA’s Planning and Input Conference, Wednesday 26 April 2017
Sentralen (Marmorsalen), Øvre Slottsgt. 3, Oslo

PROGRAMME

In the end of April, NORLA invited stakeholders to take part in a planning and input conference for Norway as Guest of Honour nation in Frankfurt 2019. We are pleased that 250 participants from the literature trade and cultural life took part in sounding the starting shot for the project – which will be the largest ever Norwegian cultural initiative abroad.

The Norwegian Guest of Honour project for the book fair in Frankfurt will, in addition to literature, include an extensive cultural framework programme, where the Guest of Honour nation will present a panorama of its life of arts and culture throughout the entire city of Frankfurt during the autumn when the book fair takes place.

Frankfurt has many good museums and culture institutions that can choose to take part in this, should they find that the Guest of Honour has exciting things to offer.

Such a culture programme must, in the same manner as the publication of a book, be prepared well in advance. And as a first step, Project Manager Halldór Guðmundsson and Culture Coordinator Marit Ingvill Sande visited Frankfurt in the end of March and were received with open arms and great interest.