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May’s Translator of the Month is Justė Nepaitė from Lithuania. She mainly translates fiction but also other genres, and her translation of Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle 3 was released in January. Later this year, Jon Fosse’s Scenes from a Childhood / Morning and Evening will be available in her translation. Justė has also translated a number of Norwegian picture books for children, for use among Lithuanian children attending kindergartens in Norway.
In addition to being a translator, Juste has also been a tutor of Norwegian language and culture for a number of years.

This time of year we normally set off for Lillehammer to take part in the enjoyable spring adventure which is called the Norwegian festival of Literature. This year, however, the festival goes digital (May 29 – 31) and the events will therefore be available for everyone to enjoy, all around the world!

As of 31 August 2015, NORLA has received 251 Norwegian books that have been published in a total of 45 languages through NORLA’s (and in the Nordic region: The Nordic Council of Ministers’) translation subsidies.

Earlier this week German translator Hinrich Scmidt-Henkel was awarded the Eugen Helmlé Award in Sulzbach in Saarland and NORLA congratulates him warmly!

Every year the Norwegian Festival of Literature at Lillehammer is one of NORLA’s spring highlights, being the largest literary festival in the Nordic countries. As this year’s festival has gone digital so have NORLA’s two annual Lillehammer seminars for international publishers and translators of Norwegian literature. This year focusing on books for children and young adults. It has been a true pleasure getting to meet both familiar and new friends of literature, in our own living rooms.

We are pleased to share eight films made for the webinars. Here you will meet the authors and illustrators presenting their selected books for young readers. There are books in several genres, techniques, themes and for different age groups. We are confident there are new favorites in store for everyone.

The corona pandemic has seriously affected the international book industry. Therefore, it is extra gratifying to see that the there is still a strong interest in Norwegian books and also sales of foreign rights. NORLA has obtained an overview of foreign rights to the Norwegian books sold by agents and publishers in Norway during April and May. There are 150 rights sold or renewed!

NORLA took part along with the NordLit network from the Nordic countries in this year’s Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair in China, 13-15 November 2015, for the very first time. The book fair proved very successful as the interest for Norwegian books was massive – with a wonderful buzz around the launch of Håkon Øvreås and Øyvind Torseter’s award-winning book “Brune”.

Next year 215 candidates from 59 countries will be in the running for the ALMA Award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. The ALMA Award is the world’s largest international children’s and young adult literature award. The award amounts to SEK 5 million and is given annually to a single laureate or to several. Authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters are eligible for the award, which is designed to promote interest in children’s and young adult literature.

2015 will be an historical year for the dissemination of Norwegian literature in China and Taiwan. All of 18 Norwegian books will be published in Chinese this year. And 11 of these are books for children/young people.

“Increasingly more Norwegian titles are being published in China and Taiwan and this is an exciting development. We have great ambitions for increased export,” says NORLA’s Director Margit Walsø.

Maria Parr’s celebrated novel Waffle Hearts is on the shortlist for the Italian literary award Premio Strega ragazze e ragazzi (for readers 6+). The award is one of Italy’s most popular literary awards and the award ceremony will be held during the Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2016.
The Italian edition of the book has already received several other awards; Il Premio Andersen and Super Premio – Libro dell’anno 2015.

Hagen Agency celebrates its 10th anniversary and NORLA offers its warmest congratulations to agent Eirin Hagen.

Norway’s Minister of Culture Thorhild Widvey visited this year’s book fair in Frankfurt and had the opportunity to experience the level of activity at the world’s most important international literary arena. She met the book fair’s management, representatives from different guest nations and not least Norwegian publishers and agents. Widvey expressed how impressed she was with how we present Norwegian literature and especially appreciated seeing that so much good work is being done for children’s and young people’s literature.

For over a year NORLA has worked towards enabling Norway to apply for Guest of Honour status at the book fair in 2019. The government views this endeavour as a means of expanding the export of Norwegian culture and will ask the Norwegian Storting to pledge up to NOK 25 million. This still falls short on the part of the government of the amount of NOK 33 million applied for by NORLA. The total budget is NOK 55 million.

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.

NORLA recently visited the Non/Fiction Book Fair in Moscow, an important fair we are happy to attend every year. Russian publishers were, as in previous years, very interested in Norwegian books and this year several non-fiction titles were sold to Russia ahead of the book fair; Morten Strøksnes: Havboka, Lars Fr. H. Svendsen: Ensomhetens filosofi,
Tore Rem: Hamsun. Reisen til Hitler, Erika Fatland: Sovjetistan and Bår Stenvik: Bløff.

At the fair the books from Norway in demand were particularly children’s books and non-fiction, especially history and viking-related books.

Since the autumn of 2014 NORLA has worked intensively to lay the foundation to enable Norway to apply for Guest of Honour status at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2019. We are pleased that this initiative was met with overwhelming support from the Storting, says Margit Walsø, director of NORLA.

2015 has been a fantastic year for Norwegian literature abroad and an exciting year for NORLA. We have worked intensively to lay the foundation to enable Norway to apply for Guest of Honour status at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2019. We are pleased that this initiative has met with overwhelming support from the Storting. When the broad engagement on the part of the book industry now receives the whole-hearted support of the Government and the Storting, we have a fantastic starting point for a Norwegian application for Guest of Honour status. The Storting’s decision to back the application with NOK 30 million creates an exceptional opportunity to make a large investment in the export of Norwegian literature and culture, and we thank everyone who has contributed to our having come this far in the application process.