This year edition of the Latvian Book Fair, which will be held from March 1st till March 3rd in Ķīpsala International Exhibition Hall of Latvian capital Riga, will host an international conference in collaboration with ALDUS on reading promotion and audience engagement and a number of appointments to celebrate the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL).

The international conference “In Search of Success Factors in Current Reality of Book Market (Fairs)”  will take place on March 1 in Riga as the part of the professional programme of Latvian Book Fair.

The conference will continue to explore the current best practices in book publishing and reading promotion that were already widely covered in the conference “How The Book Meets Its Reader”  which took place in Riga in 18th October, 2018. This time the main topics will be devoted to the role of the book fairs, literary prizes and some successfule reading promition strategies from Italy, Sweden and Lithuania with fresh update on recent state of Latvian book market in the end of the conference.

Book-fair themed presentations, including Bologna Childrens’ Book Fair and Rome Book Fair Più Libri Più liberi will cover the versatilty and continuous innovation as the success factor of the book fair and the successful strategies to maintain and engage with the audience. Karin Sandberg from Swedish Publishers Association has promised to provide the audience with insight into wide variety of literary prizes in Sweden (which is home of some most prestigeous international awards) with focus on August Prize which is organized by Swedish PA. Last but not least of our foreign guests is Aida Dobkevičiute – seasoned expert on book trade, former executive director of Lithuanian Publishers Association who has initiated and/or helped to organize several important promotion projects for publishers and general readership.

Among the topics scheduled for discussion in the last session of the conference is not only the fresh statistics about the Latvian book market, bestsellers and situation with translations from and into Latvian, but also the update on impact of EUPL winning novels in the success rate of iterary translation projects co-funded by Creative Europe. Latvian PA gathers these data for several years, and the 2018 figures are now included.

The conference is organized in the framework of ALDUS project co-financed by Creative Europe.

During the Book Fair, there EUPL winners will be attending and present their works to their readers. On March 1, at 13:00 pm, the Chzeck writer of Bulgarian descent Bianka Bellova will present her antiutopia Jezero – The Lake  (Ezers, translated into Latvian by Halina Lapiņa & published by Pētergailis in 2018); on March 2, at 14:00 pm, the Estonian writer Paavo Matsin (Pasha Matshinov) will present his ironical novel Gogoli disko – Gogol’s Disco (Gogoļa disko, translated into Latvian by Maima Grīnberga & published by Janis Roze Publishers in 2019); on March 3, at 11:00 pm the Lithuanian writer Undine Radzeviciute will talk about her writing, the EUPL awarded novel Žuvys ir drakonai  – Fish and Dragons (Zivis un pūķi) and her new novel Kraujas melynas  ( – Blue Blood, Grey Sky (Asinis zilas, debesis pelēkas, both novels translated into Latvian by Dace Meiere, published respectively by Mansards and Janis Roze Publishers in 2019).

All meetings with EUPL authors are scheduled in Writer’s Guestrom of the Fair.

The Latvian Publishers Association will also discuss the impact of EUPL authors on success rate of the translation projects co-financed by Creative Europe and present the updated statistics in the conference “In Search of Success Factors in Current Reality of Book Market (Fairs)” on March 1.

For more information contact project supervisor in Latvia Renate Punka, president of Latvian Publishers Association