Gearing up for the Lviv Publishers Forum
The 15th Publishers Forum is set to open on Sept. 11 in Lviv. This is the largest book fair in Ukraine and one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe.
The forum, which is a special event for the residents of Lviv, is also a national drawing card. Events like this help the public to raise the level of its priorities, tastes, and preferences.
The Lviv Publishers Forum was once held under the apt slogan “People, Read!” because, according to statistics, 46 percent of Ukrainians do not buy books because they say they don’t need them.
On Aug. 31 Kyiv’s Khreshchatyk Boulevard was the venue of an event called “Book Fever.” More than 300 young people sat along the entire length of the street-a kind of human chain-reading books. This was a fitting way to demonstrate a new way of life-living through reading.
As Galicians say, the Lviv forum will be the envy of all Ukrainian book fairs. This year’s program features around 650 participants and over 260 events, including a charity action called “Give a Child a Book!” with assistance from the pop singer Ruslana. The collected books will be distributed to libraries in areas that were recently stricken by floods.
Speaking at a press conference organized on the eve of the Lviv Publishers Forum were the president of the book fair, Oleksandra Koval, the first counselor of the Polish Embassy, Ola Hnatiuk; the cultural attache at the Lithuanian Embassy, Gabriele Zaidite; the cultural attache at the Austrian Embassy, Alexander Bayerl; and the owner of the Book Supermarket KS chain, Kostiantyn Klimashenko.
During the book fair there will be an exhibit dedicated to the great Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert and a book launch of his three volumes of essays. Visitors to the forum will be able to acquaint themselves with Marcelius Martinaitis, one of the most well-known poets of Lithuania.
The Lithuanians are organizing a political and literary debate entitled “What Is Europe?” to which representatives of Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and Poland have been invited. Many other events organized with the assistance of the above-mentioned embassies will also be held.
“I would like to emphasize that our literary festival, which will be held during the forum, is a truly international affair because it will feature writers from 16 countries,” the president of the Publishers Forum said.
“This is good because the number of literary festivals is increasing every year, and the one in Lviv is attracting more attention. If we continue to hold the festival in an interesting way, more writers will want to attend. There is a problem, however, with inviting foreign writers, and that is because Ukrainian publishers barely publish any translations. Ukraine is one of Europe’s most backward countries as far as the number of translations is concerned. So, logically, when we invite a celebrated author from abroad, his agent analyzes the sales of his client’s books in our country and then declines the invitation,” Koval said.
“That was why we failed to strike a deal with several famous authors whose books are sold by the hundreds of thousands in every European country but ours. Still, among the writers who are expected to come this year are Vladimir Sorokin and Tatiana Tolstaia (Russia), Adam Zagajewski (Poland), Marcelius Martinaitis (Lithuania), and Katherine Pancol (France) whom we know, unfortunately, only through Russian translations of her works.”
For more detailed information on the Lviv Publishers Forum, visit www.bookforum.com.ua.
P. S. The book James Mace: “Your Dead Chose Me,” the latest addition to The Day Library Series, will be launched at the Lviv Publishers Forum on Sept. 12 at 5 p.m. at the conference hall of the Palace of Arts. Everyone is invited to attend.
