Publishers from Britain, France and Germany visited Slovakia

The aim of the pilot project was to introduce our guests to Slovakia, its culture and especially literature and to arouse their interest in discovering and publishing local authors.

Thanks to the cooperation between SLC and the BRAK festival, the invited publishers experienced a lively festival atmosphere and met many people from the book industry, including literary theorists, translators, publishers and writers.

On Friday morning, we welcomed them at the SLC, where director Pavel Sibyla and the staff of the foreign department presented their current projects and activities, as well as their plans for the future. They learned about the SLOLIA grant program designed to support the publication of original Slovak literature in translation. Author and theorist Michal Tallo had prepared a lecture on various tendencies and trends in current Slovak literature. The publishers at contemporary Slovak books and published translations and gained a lot of inspiration and suggestions for possible translations.

On Friday, May 31st in Rómer's house, the SLC organized a presentation of ten Slovak publishing houses which offer a variety of books, e.g. adult fiction, children's books, poetry, specialized publications and reports, as well as the fantasy genre. Absynt, BRAK, Drewo a srd / Vlna, Hydra, Ikar, Literárna bašta, Morgonrock, N Press, SLOVART and Zum Zum production accepted the invitation. This created a unique opportunity to connect Slovak and foreign publishers and enable them to exchange ideas and experiences.

On Saturday, June 1st at 3PM, a public discussion entitled Slovak Books Abroad took place at the Bratislava City Gallery, during which Charlotte Groult, Janika Rüter and Isabella Barber answered Dado Nagy's curious questions. They talked about how their publishing houses think about translation titles and what determines whether they get excited about a book and decide to publish it. The program was complemented by numerous informal discussions, tours of Bratislava and, last but not least, gastronomic experiences.

The SLC's ambition is to make Slovak literature more widely available on larger book markets and to produce translations in major languages such as English, French and German. We believe that thanks to similar projects, new titles of Slovak literature will appear on the shelves of foreign bookshops in the future.