When you read this I will be in Norway – wearing my red Norwegian sweater and channeling my inner Viking. I love my sweater so much that it appears on the cover of our new Nordic Riveter magazine, just launched in print, online and free.
Every November I take my sweater back to its roots for the SILK International Arts and Literature Festival in the lovely heritage town of Skudeneshavn. It’s here that my red sweater was born, knitted into life by one of the amazing SILK volunteers, Silje Skaadel. Not only does everyone here seem to knit (even during events), but they read voraciously too – in English and Norwegian. My SILK guests this year, Victoria Hislop and Ann Cleeves, are major bestsellers in Norway, and Jan Carson and Jieun Baek – here for the first time – soon will be, I’m sure, after SILK audiences attend their events on Belfast and North Korea. (Planning to take all my guests on a visit to the local Skudeneshavn wool shop too, ofcourse.)
Also this month, we’ll be riveting at the Malta Book Festival and at our annual ELIT European Literature Days festival on the Danube in Austria – an inspirational gathering of minds, ideas and languages from all over Europe, organized by our ELIT-Creative Europe partners.
I’ll be interviewing two great Europeans in Austria, Deborah Levy and Elif Shafak, which will be an honour and pleasure. It’s also wonderful to be able to share the good news that Elif Shafak has been asked to be the fourth author to contribute to the outstanding Future Library project in Norway, after Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and Sjón.
News! News! The submission deadline has been extended for the EBRD LITERATURE PRIZE!
Due to an incredibly positive response and requests from UK publishers, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has decided to extend the eligibility period for submissions to its new annual Literary Prize: it will accept works of fiction published in the UK from 1 April 2016 to 30 September 2017 (18 months, not 12 as before). The deadline is now Wednesday 15 November. This also happens to be my birthday and as I am chair of the judges you will make my day if you send in your novels. This major new international literature prize of 20,000 Euros is shared between author and translator. We announce the shortlist in the new year and the winner in April 2018. And if you are not eligible to submit this year then you can next year (and the year after and, and……). Read all about it here.
Our UK-Swiss literary collaboration with Pro Helvetia is progressing in leaps and bounds. It’s really exciting and, as with all our events and projects, it is open to you for your ideas and collaborations too. In addition to the new 12 Swiss Books magazine which we helped produce – free for you to upload here – if you’d like to attend our UK-Swiss brainstorming the afternoon of Friday 8th December, do email us at contact@eurolitnetwork.com.
Please save the date for our next European Literature Network meeting taking place the evening of December 8th – Christmas cheer, drinks and snacks in seasonal abundance. (Details and registration at anna.blasiak@yahoo.co. uk or contact@eurolitnetwork.com)
And finally, don’t forget our regular online monthly #RivetingReviews – our next deadline is Monday 4th December for publication 8th December. If you’d like to review for us, you must first please read our ‘riveting rules’, then contact us with your suggestions, or we can suggest books to you. The idea is to make reviewing of literature in translation more popular and less scary – your review can be 140 characters or it can be a paragraph or 1000 words. After our groundbreaking Polish, Russian and Nordic Riveters, our next special edition magazine will cover the literature of the Baltic Countries and will be launched to coincide with the Baltics Market Focus at London Book Fair, 10th-12th April. Open for ideas! I’m already scouting out Baltic fashion and folk crafts for THAT cover! Maybe also something for our Fashion and Fiction talks series at the Victoria and Albert Museum?
Love,
Rosie The Riveter