The International Book Arsenal Festival, in cooperation with Connecting Emerging Literary Artists (CELA) and with the financial support of the European Union, has selected three writers for the project. They are Eugenia Kuznetsova, Myroslav Laiuk and Anastasiia Levkova.
Within the first cycle of the project, a prose work of each selected Ukrainian author will be translated into 9 European languages by members of other national teams from:
- Spain;
- Italy;
- the Czech Republic;
- Poland;
- the Netherlands;
- Serbia;
- Slovenia;
- Romania;
- Bulgaria.
Excerpts from these translations will also be published on the CELA website and other European literary platforms.
Within the project, Eugenia Kuznetsova, Anastasiia Levkova and Myroslav Laiuk will participate in two international masterclasses on professional growth, will receive mentoring support concerning international promotion and cases of professional communication (artist bio, portfolio, photo, etc.). In addition, they will take part in networking meetings with writers and translators of the CELA network during visits to literary festivals and team meetings of the project participating countries.
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- Eugenia Kuznetsova
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- Myroslav Laiuk
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- Anastasiia Levkova
Rostyslav Semkiv, consultant of the CELA project, Docent the Department of Literature at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, director of the Smoloskyp Publishing House, author of books about writing, spoke about the selection of authors and the value of the project:
Recently, prose has changed considerably. It has become more skillful, more experimental. On the other hand, not least due to the development of writing courses, people have begun working harder on texts. More high quality prose appears. I think the situation is no worse than in the 1920s or 1960s. Are there more masterpieces? I do not know, at least a lot of strong books come out.
Connecting Emerging Literary Artists (CELA) is an international project of cooperation and development of literary talents, promotion and distribution of literary works, involving 12 literary organizations from 11 countries of the world. And this is already the third iteration of CELA. In 2024, the team of the International Book Arsenal Festival joined this large-scale European project for the first time. It is designed for four years, more details can be found here.
The CELA project is funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the funding body can be held responsible for them.