By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story covers the ongoing Sharjah International Book Fair. This year, the Fair introduced three new book awards for English language works (discussed in the piece). In addition, the Egypt-based Dar El Shorouk won the second edition of the Etisalat Prize for Arabic Children’s Literature with the book, Al Noqta Al Sawda (The Black Dot), written …
What are the Best Practices for Book Festivals?
By Edward Nawotka In today’s lead story and a blog post from yesterday, we discuss five different book festivals taking place across China and the UAE. In the UAE, some 70 authors will appear in Dubai at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature over just three days; a similar number will appear at the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival over …
Book Fest In the Shadow of the World’s Tallest Building
By Edward Nawotka There are certain authors who seem to pop up on nearly every literary festival roster — we’re looking at you Alexander McCall Smith — and it always amazes me how such writers get their work done while spending so much time on the road. Then again, at least in the case of McCall Smith, one wonders how …
Krauss Leads Abu Dhabi Book Fair into a New Era
By Chip Rossetti In 2009, when Monika Krauss took the position of General Manager of KITAB, the organization that manages the annual Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (ADIBF), she was coming full circle. Although born in Iraq to a German father and an Iraqi mother, Monika Krauss had spent most of her life somewhere else, having been raised in Nigeria …
A Free Library for Every Family (in Sharjah)
By Chip Rossetti SHARJAH, UAE: While many countries would like to encourage a “culture of reading” in their citizens, perhaps no government has taken a more direct role in promoting reading than the United Arab Emirate of Sharjah, through its official initiative known as “Knowledge Without Borders.” Conceived under the auspices of the ruler of Sharjah, H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan …
Bonus Material: The UAE’s Race to Translate
By Edward Nawotka One point on the globe where translation is booming is the United Arab Emirates. There, two translation programs, Kalima from Abu Dhabi and Tarjem from Dubai, have made it a race to see who can translate literary works the fastest and while maintaining the highest quality possible. The first out of the gate (ahem, this is the …
Weekly Recap: Salinger’s Law, China’s Internet Boycott, Ghana’s New Sleuth, Training CEOs
By Edward Nawotka This week at Publishing Perspectives we were hot on the trail of a number of developing stories; including J.D. Salinger’s lawsuit against his nemesis Fredrik Colting and artist Ai Weiwei’s call to boycott the internet in protest of China’s Green Dam computer filtering software (It worked! – see Bonus Material below). We also offered Ghanaian-American novelist Kwei …