For the first time in a long time, the Christmas Book Fair has a different feel than before. I don’t know if it’s the residual taste of marble that still gnashes between our teeth from the spring edition, or if it’s due to the nice pre-Christmas weather, or the fact that this year we are also actively participating in the program, but the feeling is “more like this”.
The fair began with three short but official openings. The first one declared the book week to have begun. Deputy Mayor of Sofia Todor Chobanov, President of the Bulgarian Book Council Velizara Dobreva, official representatives of the cultural centers of the Visegrad Four, as well as the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra welcomed the first guests of the fair in the Central Lobby.
A little later, the opening of the stand of the Visegrad Four countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) took place in the Marble Lobby. The evening of the first day ended with the opening and launching of the fifth Sofia International Literature Festival with the first discussion in the program – “Meeting of Generations”.
This year the festival was extremely rich and rich in topics, meetings and discussions. Some basic and even painful issues of the book life in the country were touched upon, such as self-publishing, book trailers and reading practices. The center of the second day of the fair was the opening and discussion “The Millennium Generation – ILLUSTRATORS. The difficult meeting with the Bulgarian publisher”. This is the first exhibition that the website “Bulgarian Illustration” has organized, with the support of the National Center and the Bulgarian Federation of Children’s Books and the last discussion in the Year of the Children’s Book, announced by the center. And as the program director of the festival Vera Petrova herself shared: “The discussion and the exhibition were the main highlights of the entire program.”
You can see a report, photos and a video from the discussion on our website.
The program of the third day included the opening of a very valuable exhibition - "Samizdat Books from Czechoslovakia and Poland", and the topic of samizdat life also became part of the program of Saturday's discussions in the Marble Lobby.
On Friday evening, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences presented the Golden Lion awards. The award for “Best Publishing Project” went to “Jeanette 45” publishing house for the books “The Warm Man”, “A Cheerful Tickling Laughter” and “A Book for All Things”. The expert jury that awarded the award included: Prof. Viktor Paunov, Assoc. Prof. Ivo Panov, Prof. Kiril Gogov, Silvia Choleva, Mladen Vlashki. In the category, a total of twelve publishing houses presented their proposals to the jury, which nominated four of them for the award.
The second category – “Publishing Project with the Greatest Public Significance and Wide Media Interest”, which is awarded for a book or series of books that address important issues for society and have aroused wide media interest, the award went to “List” publishing house with the series “Children’s Masterpieces by Great Writers”. Journalists who cover the book sector participate in the nomination and determination of the award. Nominations for this award come from the members of the jury and the winner is chosen by voting. This year's jury includes Andrey Zahariev, Georgi Angelov, Petko Todorov, Svetlana Dicheva, Stefan Dzhambazov.
Two workshops for children marked the non-working Saturday morning, led by the author of "Questions" - Petya Kokudeva, who talked about her nine-month journey around the world, and the illustrator of Yordan Radichkov's latest publication - "Colorful Rug" - Maria Valkova.
The book week ended on Sunday with a discussion on the topic "Books of 2017. Theories and Practices of Reading", in which Mihaela Petrova, Amelia Licheva and Sara Hristova took part, and the moderator of the conversation was Alexander Krastev - you can watch a video of the discussion on the website and the FB page of the "I Read" website.
The Fair in 2018
On December 13, 2017, the management of the Bulgarian Book Association extended an official invitation to all publishing houses for a “Breakfast for Publishers”, organized by the Goethe-Institut. The special occasion for the morning meeting over a cup of coffee was the preparation of the Sofia Book Fair in 2018, when German-language literature will be in focus. Guests and presenters during the breakfast were Tobias Voss – Chief Manager of International Projects at the Frankfurt Book Fair; Berbel Becker – Head of International Projects at the Frankfurt Book Fair; Müge Sokmen, International Alliance of Independent Publishers; Valentina Bozhichkova – Organizing Secretary of the Bulgarian Book Association.
What to expect in the period 11-16 December 2018?
The focus will be on the countries of Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and the Frankfurt Book Fair will visit Sofia. There is no program yet, or at least it has not been announced publicly, although the fair's representatives themselves shared that they still do not know what the organization will be like. It turned out that the most famous book forum has already visited Sofia, back in 1994, a fact that surprised many of those present. The organizers from the German side also announced the focus countries in the coming years – 2018 – Georgia; 2019 – Norway; 2020 – Canada.
The logical question was how Bulgaria could apply for a focus country, and the answer made it clear that our country does not have a policy and mechanism for applying. In addition to the internal market of a country, state responsibility and active activity are also important. One of the factors is the quantity and policy of translated literature, but not on the basis of free trade, but of state translation centers, which it turned out were also in Bulgaria, but it practically does not work and the Ministry of Culture. The tradition of an “Honorary Country” or “Focus Country”, as the media often call it, has existed as a practice for the Frankfurt Fair since 1976, when the theme was “Latin America”. Over the years, various themes and countries have become the focus of the event, such as “Children’s Books” (1978), “Religions” (1982), “George Orwell” (1984), the Sub-Saharan region, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Flanders, Iceland, India, Japan, Mexico, Catalan languages, Russia, Arab countries, etc.
We will follow the news and developments of the next fair, and you can view photos and impressions from the previous one here.
Photos and text: Milena Radeva
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