Everything Is Translation is the Focus Theme of the 13th International Book Arsenal Festival, which will be held on May 29-June 1 at the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

The Focus Theme is curated by Marci Shore—

Professor of History at Yale University; she will begin teaching at the University of Toronto’s Munk School in fall 2025. Marci is also a regular visiting fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna.

She is the author of the books Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968 and The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. A new edition of her third book, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution, was published in March 2024,

and Oksana Forostyna—

Opinion Editor at Ukraina Moderna, publisher, translator and author. A contributor to Liberties, The European Review of Books, Krytyka, Dwutygodnik, and Visegrad Insight.

She is on the supervisory board for the Cultural Strategy Institute (Lviv), in 2016-2018 she served on the board of Eurozine magazine editorial board (Vienna), one of the expert boards of the International Renaissance Foundation (2021-2022).

The metaphor Everything Is Translation is revealed by Marci Shore and Oksana Forostyna in the curatorial essay which is also a dialog between them. This conversation lasted throughout the summer and fall of 2024. The outcome was recorded at the end of that year which we will now call the last year before the great geopolitical shifts that are changing the international order established after World War II.

What do the numerous untranslatables tell us—words that exist in one language but are absent in another? Are then slightly different realities meant, from language to language, from society to society? And what if the experiences of these societies differ radically? Can language reliably convey the experience of one to another? … The answer is in the curators’ conversation, but to find it, you need to read the conversation to the end

—Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

I fear an enormous amount of human suffering is left silent for eternity. And given this, we should all the more so appreciate what language can do, however, imperfectly, and appreciate those who attempt to translate moments at the very border of human experience into words. We will never understand anyone else’s experience perfectly, all the more so in situations of extremity. That said, the act of translating–of translating our own experiences into language, and of translating someone else’s experiences from one language into another–is a leap of faith that some kind of understanding is possible

—Marci Shore, the co-curator of the Focus Theme of the 13th Book Arsenal.

This year, the Main Program of the Festival will be curated by journalist, presenter, translator, literary scholar and producer of Radio Kultura Iryna Slavinska.

The Kids and Teens Program will also take place during Book Arsenal. Its work will be curated by writer, journalist, translator and author of books for kids and teens Olya Rusina.

In addition, the special teens program is prepared by participants of the Litlab Teens.

Manager of cultural and educational projects, editor and literary scholar Yuliia Konopliana will be the curator of the Professional Program this year.

The 13th Book Arsenal will host the Translatorium Literary and Translation Festival with a special program. It will be curated by co-founder and director of the festival Tania Rodionova.

The Book Arsenal Fellowship Program, curated by cultural manager and organizer of programs and projects for professional audiences Oksana Karpiuk, will be held for the second time. It will be a platform for B2B meetings and acquainting of foreign publishers, rights managers and literary agents with the Ukrainian book market.

PEN Ukraine will present a special program of events for the third time.

Publishers will also have separate events in the festival program.

The Festival identity, developed by the Mystetskyi Arsenal design team led by art director Liera Huievska, visually emphasizes the layering and converging of senses of this year’s Focus Theme.

Book Arsenal is an international event organized by the Mystetskyi Arsenal. The festival has been held since 2011, and has become one of the most influential literary and artistic events in Eastern Europe. In 2019, it won The Literary Festival Award of the International Excellence Awards. The mission of the International Book Arsenal Festival is to create such interactions between people, communities, institutions when the combination of aesthetic experience and intellectual inclusion in the context of a book strengthens the capacity of a person and society.

Book Arsenal is organized in cooperation with  Art Arsenal Community NGO. The festival is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation. The special teens program from the Litlab Teens is supported by the British Council’s program Support for Cultural Activity in Ukraine with UK Involvement.

The International Book Arsenal Festival in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Ukraine presents the winning publications of the annual Best Book Design Contest. This year, 242 books that were published between December 2023 and November 2024 and had not been previously submitted to the Contest competed for the victory.

The jury of the Best Book Design — 2024:

• Zakentiy Horobyov, graphic designer, typographer, illustrator;
• Valeriia Guievska, Art Director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal;
• Anna Ivanenko, Studio Seri/graph;
• Dasha Podoltseva, graphic designer, visual artist;
• Anatoly Popel, CEO of CASES founder and head of Creative Practice;
• Kuba Sowiński, graphic designer, lecturer (Poland);
• Olena Staranchuk, co-curator of Pictoric.

We have the Grand Prix winner who also won in the nomination Utilitarian Book:  the publication  Pomizh  (first issue). Congratulations to Sasha Bychenko (Kultura studio), the author of the publication visual concept, its design and layout, and the publishing house Kultura Medialna.

The winner in the category Word Book is the publication Strength Has Grown on the Fracture. Publication concept, architectonics—Tetiana Kostina. Cover design, layout—Daria Stetsenko. Publishing house—punkt publishing.

The publication Kotsiubynskyi: Between Cinema and Literature, Aliona Penzii, Stanislav Bytiutskyi, Oleh Olifer, won in the nomination Art Book.  Book artistic design, layout—Butsia bureau, Halia Verheles.  Publishing house—Dovzhenko Centre.

The jury awarded the first place in the nomination Visual Storytelling to the book The Path of Grain.  Artistic design—Postmen, Yaroslav Vedmid, Oleh Hryshchenko, Oleksii Chekal.  Font design—Oleksii Chekal (title lettering), Fixel font.  Self-published, at the initiative of KERNEL.

As for the nomination Experiment, there is no absolute winner in it this year. The jury collectively decided not to choose a winner in this category.

This year, the Contest jury distinguished seven publications with Special Honors. For more details, please follow the link.

Finalists of the Best Book Design — 2024 Contest:

Nomination Word Book:

• May I Have One Onion?, Oksana Lemishka.  Concept, architectonics—Tetiana Kostina.  Publishing house—punkt publishing.
• Culture under Pressure from OOO/OOOO, Borys Filonenko.  Artistic design—Volodymyr Havrysh.  Publishing house—ist publishing.

Nomination Art Book:

• Alla Horska, compiled by: Anastasiia Yatskovska.  Publishing house—RODOVID in collaboration with the Dukat Art Foundation.
• Before the Future, authors: Iryna Miroshnykova, Oleksii Petrov, Borys Filonenko.  Design—Ostap Yashchuk.  Publishing house—ist publishing.

Nomination Utilitarian Book:

• TimeLine, Valentyna Merzhyievska.  Artistic design—Dmytro Shkolnyi.  Self-published.
• Periodical printed publication Chronicle of Ukrainian Design, Spiilka design bureau.  Artistic design—Volodymyr Smyrnov.  Publishing house—ist publishing.

Nomination Visual Storytelling:

• My Plast, Yuliia Smal.  Publication concept, book architectonics—Nataliia Mospan.  Illustrations, cover design—Valeriia  Kryzhanovska.  Layout—Uliana Reshetukha.  Publishing house—LLC My Bookshelf Publishing House.
• The Secret Life of Wonder Beasts by Mariia Prymachenko, Maryna Makushchenko.  Artistic design—Dariia Filippova.
  Layout—Yana Plaskonis.  Publishing house—The Old Lion Publishing House.
• A Fairytale from Granny Nastia “About a Peasant, His Daughter, a Gentleman and a Foaling Mare”, Maryna Shchehelska, Anastasiia Chmunevych.  Artistic solution—Maryna Shchehelska.  Self-published.

Nomination Experiment:

• Dream Dictionary, author of the idea and artistic solution—Maryna Shchehelska.  Self-published.
• A Dream in a Warm Bed on the Granny’s Soft Embroidered Pillow, book design—Yuliia Pokydko.  Self-published.

It is with joy and pride that I would like to distinguish high competition for the victory in this year’s contest. Under the conditions of the full-scale war, our publishers, designers and printers create cool, worthy books, and it truly delights. This year, there were a lot of strong contenders, new names, unexpected finds and interesting trends. The jury members faced a difficult choice and, as a result of lively discussions, they did reach a consensus. And I hope that we will be able to talk about the emerging trends and reflections, the favorites from the long list that, unfortunately, did not make it to the final, and the future benchmarks within the special program for designers during the next Book Arsenal

— Yuliia Kozlovets, the Director of the International Book Arsenal Festival.

It is impressive how, under difficult conditions, the entire industry is able to create publications that delight with their aesthetics, innovation and quality. The contest maintains close ties to Germany: for many years, the Book Art Foundation (Stiftung Buchkunst) has been presenting the winners of the contest within the collection The Most Beautiful Books of the World. It means that this year, too, thousands of visitors to Germany’s largest book fairs, as well as readers of the libraries and students of the universities where these books will be exhibited, will see Ukrainian publications. Last year, the winner was given the opportunity to go on a professional trip to Germany, and we are sure that this year’s program will be no less effective and inspiring

— Fabian Mühlthaler, the Director of the Goethe-Institut Ukraine.

What will the winners of the Contest receive?

The winner of the Grand Prix will receive the main prize of the Contest—the iconic statuette of the Contest. All finalists, winners and holders of special honors of the Contest will receive honorary diplomas, book prizes from the Mystetskyi Arsenal and will represent Ukrainian book design in the international competition The Most Beautiful Books of the World, organized by the German Foundation Buchkunst. The collection of the winning books will be exhibited at the international book fairs in Leipzig and Frankfurt in 2025.

The author of the biggest contribution to the design of the Grand Prix-winning book will be invited by the Foundation Buchkunst on a professional trip to Germany in 2025.

All publications submitted to the Contest that did not receive awards and special honors will be donated to libraries in cooperation with PEN Ukraine.

The author of the Contest identity is designer Anna Harnaha.

All photos in the material are by Oleksandr Popenko.

The team of the International Book Arsenal Festival and the Goethe-Institut Ukraine would like to express gratitude for the support and cooperation in holding the Contest to the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the Foundation Buchkunst, as well as to the project’s media partners:

CASES and The Village Ukraine.

The Mystetskyi Arsenal will traditionally take part in the largest book fair of the world—the Frankfurter Buchmesse, which this year will last from October 16 to 20. The institution’s team will dedicate its stand to the concept Life on the Edge, which was the focus theme of the XII Book Arsenal. In Frankfurt, new catalogs of the Mystetskyi Arsenal will be presented, and the international presentation of the own editions of the Dovzhenko Centre and the Kyiv bureau Butsya, dedicated to the research of film adaptations of Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi’s works, will be held.

“Soon we will present a selection of our new catalogs at the Frankfurter Buchmesse. They were printed in May in Kharkiv, right before Book Arsenal. A few days later, with their bombs and missiles, Russians destroyed other Kharkiv printing house—Factor Druk. These are unrealistic working conditions for Ukrainian printers and book publishers, but the catalogs were printed, no matter what. And we are proud of the quality of this work and the strength of resistance shown by our people,” Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal, said. “It is important for us as an institution to tell international partners about how Ukrainian culture and books are being created today. That is why we decided to present the concept of the XII Book Arsenal Life on the Edge in Frankfurt as well.”

At the stand of the Mystetskyi Arsenal J85 in the section of the fair Hall 3.1 Art. Art Book. Design, the following newly published catalogs will be presented: Mystetskyi Arsenal. The Collection, Heart of Earth, Imprint. Ukrainian Printmaking of the XX–XXI Centuries, Futuromarennia. The bilingual own edition of the Dovzhenko Centre and the Kyiv bureau Butsya, dedicated to the research of film adaptations of Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi’s works on the occasion of the writer’s 160th anniversary, will also be showcased. Earlier this edition was first printed for the XII Book Arsenal, and for the largest book event in Europe it was published in English and will be distributed among the professional community.

This year, the Special Program for Publishers from Ukraine and Neighboring Countries, organized by the Frankfurter Buchmesse in cooperation with Book Arsenal and the Goethe-Institut Ukraine, that provides opportunities for intensive training and communication of publishers, editors, rights managers and literary agents from Ukraine, Armenia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Kazakhstan and Hungary, will be held for the third time in a row. Within the program, 15 participants, 7 of whom are from Ukraine, will take part in Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024, join networking events, take part in seminars from professionals of the German book market and have a rich agenda of events at the national stands of the countries participating in the program. The program was launched in 2022 and is financially supported by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.

The team of the Mystetskyi Arsenal traditionally joined the development of the program of the Ukrainian National Stand, in which Ukrainian authors, journalists and artists will take part. This year’s focus theme of Ukraine is Reclaiming the Voice. We are reclaiming our voice on the world stage and showing not only Ukrainian indomitability, but also the versatility and uniqueness of Ukrainian books. We are making new voices of our literature heard, demonstrating new German translations, talking about Ukrainian classics, reportage and poetry.

The participation of the Mystetskyi Arsenal in the Frankfurter Buchmesse was made possible with the financial support of the Ministry of State for Culture and the Media of Germany within the project “Exchange between German and Ukrainian Literary and Book Sectors”.

The project aims at supporting the work of Ukrainian authors, publishers and media professionals with the help of a number of individual projects, contributing to the spread of knowledge and understanding of Ukrainian culture and history in Germany. The project is implemented by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) in close cooperation with the Frankfurter Buchmesse and the Ukrainian Book Institute, as well as with the Ukrainian cultural institution Mystetskyi Arsenal, the professional online media about books and culture Chytomo and the Goethe-Institut Ukraine.

Frankfurter Buchmesse is the most important international exhibition of publishing achievements and diverse content. Here global publishing experts meet partners from the technology industry and related creative industries such as cinema and games. Thus, the Frankfurter Buchmesse is a hub for the international trade in rights and licensing, where new types of cooperation and business models emerge.

The International Book Arsenal Festival together with the Frankfurter Buchmesse and the Goethe-Institut Ukraine are pleased to announce the publishers selected to participate in the third season of the Special Program for Publishers from Ukraine and Neighboring Countries The publishers, editors, rights managers and literary agents from Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary will:

• participate in the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024,
• join networking events,
• be participants in seminars from professionals of the German book market.

To participate in the third season of the program, which will take place on October 14-19, 15 participants, 7 of whom are from Ukraine, were selected, namely:

• Nadiia Velychko, ACCA
• Maryana Kondzelka, Irbis Comics
• Slava Svitova, Creative Women Publishing
• Oksana Babenko, My Bookshelf
• Svitlana Smilian, One More Page
• Tetiana Polonik, punkt publishing
• Anastasiia Bilousova, Rodovid

Foreign participants:

• Liana Shiroyan, Armenia, EDGE
• Barbora Baronová, Czech Republic, wo-men
• Nuka Gambashidze, Georgia, Sulakauri
• Bence Szenderák, Hungary, Jelenkor
• Bayan Kabylash, Kazakhstan, Nomad Culture Foundation
• Anita Musiol, Poland, Wydawnictwo Pauza
• Vlad Adascalitei, Romania, Storia
• František Malík, Slovak Republic, Brak

The Special Program for Publishers from Ukraine and Neighboring Countries is a professional program launched by the Frankfurter Buchmesse in 2022 as part of a strategic partnership and in cooperation with the International Book Arsenal Festival and the Goethe-Institut Ukraine.

35 thousand visitors and more than 160 events—the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival is over in the Mystetskyi Arsenal. In 2023, Book Arsenal was attended by 28 thousand visitors.

On Sunday, June 2, the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival was over. The musical and poetic event Opus Doloris. Polyphony, dedicated to the Ukrainian writers who died from Russia’s aggression—Viktoria Amelina, Hlib Babich, Volodymyr Vakulenko, Oleh Kliufas, Maksym Kryvtsov, Ihor Mysiak, Illia Chernilevskyi—took place on the last evening of the festival.   

The stand with books destroyed by a Russian missile in Kharkiv became important in terms of meaning and attracted a lot of visitors. The books on this stand, burnt, with the smell of burning, loudly reminded visitors that the war was going on. The war not only against people, but also against our culture and language.

This year, more than 160 events were held at the Festival. Discussions, performances, plays, movie shows, concerts, public talks, as well as 10 exhibition projects and 4 book collections, which comprehend the difficult experiences Ukrainian women and men undergo during the war.

“Book Arsenal is a multidisciplinary festival where the most important issues of the society we live in are comprehended in the context of books. This year, our curators of the focus theme, that is, the big question around which all the discussions revolved, Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko, offered the following metaphor—Life on the Edge. Burned publications from Kharkiv printing house Factor Druk, presented on a separate stand, became its bitter embodiment and a call to support bookish Kharkiv. And at the events of the Festival program, all of us together were comprehending the experiences that the entire country, our culture and its people were currently undergoing. I am grateful to all partners, due to whom this year’s Book Arsenal managed to happen and attracted 35 thousand visitors—I am glad that, thanks to all of you, the Mystetskyi Arsenal was able to hold the second Festival in times of the full-scale war. In this space, we did our best to strengthen and support each other and just to spend time together,”

—Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

Book Arsenal was held for the second time in the conditions of the full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine. Taking into account last year’s experience, additional security measures were implemented for visitors and participants. Besides, it was possible to take measures to continue the Festival in case of a power outage.

The festival had lasted for 3.5 days on the first floor of the Old Arsenal building, where more than 100 Ukrainian publishing houses and 5 bookstores presented their stands. Each bookstore curated a stand in a certain category: Book.ua presented the section Fiction, Books in English; Readeat—Fiction; Sens—Non-fiction; Top Comics—Comics and Graphic; Book Lion—Art Books. 

The events of the focus theme, the Literature Program, the Professional Program, the Kids and Teens Program, the Special Program of PEN Ukraine and the Special Program of The Fifth Kharkiv festival not only became a meeting place for like-minded people, but also allowed the participants and guests of the Festival to consider important topics, to get involved in the creation of new senses and to talk about experiences, both personal and social.

During the 12th Book Arsenal, 7 curatorial and special programs were presented:

Life on the Edge is the focus theme of the 12th Book Arsenal. Curators of the focus theme—Volodymyr Yermolenko and Tetyana Ogarkova.

The Literature Program Bridging the Gap. Curator—Olena Huseinova.

The Kids and Teens Program With Eyes Wide Open. Curator—Olya Rusina.

The Professional Program of Book Arsenal. Curator—Oksana Karpiuk.

The Special Program CITIES ON THE EDGE from The Fifth Kharkiv festival in cooperation with the Kharkiv Literary Museum. Curator—Yevhenii Stasinevych.

The Special Program THE CONTINUITY OF VOICE. Organizer—PEN Ukraine.

The biggest number of events was presented by the Publishers’ Program, which became the largest at the 12th Book Arsenal. Its events were organized by the publishers participating in the Festival.

The Strategic Communications Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine took part in the Festival as a program partner for the first time: it co-organized the exhibition project I Put On a Pixel Camo. Stories of Those Who Have Chosen to Fight and presented the documentary Resistance and Unity. Writers Explain How Not to Lose the Future.

More than 260 guests participated in the events of the 12th Book Arsenal. The voices of Ukrainian and foreign guests were heard on the Main, Literary, Outdoor and Publishing Stages, in the Lecture Hall and in the Workshops area, among them there were Oksana Zabuzhko, Franziska Davies, Lisa Weeda, Olena Stiazhkina, Tanja Maljartschuk, French participants—historians, writers, Antonio Iturbe, Artur Dron, Akhtem Seitablaiev, Bogdan Kolomiychuk, Botakoz Kassymbekova, Radomyr Mokryk, Maryna Hrymych, Nicolas Tenzer, David Patrikarakos, Noel Calhoun, Oleksandr Mykhed, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Olena Maksymenko, Olesya Zdorovetska, Raji Abdul Salam, Rory Finnin, Thierry Piel, Uilleam Blacker, Jakob Wunderwald, Yuri Andrukhovych, Yara Chornohuz and other public and cultural figures, military servicemen and servicewomen, politicians, writers, poets, publishers, designers, illustrators, journalists, philosophers, translators, human rights activists, movie directors, musicians, entrepreneurs, etc.

On the second day, the 12th Book Arsenal was visited by First Lady Olena Zelenska, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, Acting Minister of Culture and Information Policy Rostyslav Karandieiev, on the third day—by Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk, Minister of Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshyn, the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, public figures Serhiy Prytula and Volodymyr Borodianskyi, businessman Viktor Pinchuk and other guests.

The traditional New Titles project, which had been implemented at the Festival in cooperation with the Chytomo media resource since 2015, was presented at the 12th Book Arsenal. New Titles collected about 200 books directly or indirectly related to the topic of war, published by Ukrainian publishers from June 2023 to May 2024. After the end of the festival, the books from New Titles in the space of the festival were sent to the libraries that had been destroyed or damaged because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, within the Unbreakable Libraries program of PEN Ukraine.

This year, Book Arsenal launched the Book Arsenal Fellowship Program—a professional program within which seven foreign publishers and agents from the Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Greece and Italy visited the Festival. Partner institutions—Ukrainian Book Institute and House of Europe—showed them the statistics of the Ukrainian book market and the opportunities for financing translations of Ukrainian books. The program participants also held more than 60 B2B meetings with Ukrainian colleagues to establish partnerships.

Suspilne Ukraine became the general information partner of the 12th Book Arsenal. During all days of the festival, on-site studios of the Suspilne Kultura TV channel, Radio Кulturа, journalists of the Suspilne Kultura website, the Suspilne Studiia information project and the digital platform of Suspilne Ukraine worked at the Book Arsenal location. They made live broadcasts, gave coverage from the festival, prepared publications and invited the organizers and guests of the festival for studio interviews.

This year, media partners of the Festival were: Liroom, Cases, Liga.net, Ukrainska Pravda, Vogue.ua and 1+1 Media.

The organizers express their gratitude for the support to the partners, who joined the Festival in 2024.

This year, 130 volunteers got involved in the work of the 12th Book Arsenal and helped the Festival team and visitors.

The festival team made video recordings of some of the discussions, as well as of the musical and poetic performance of Kateryna Kalytko and Mariana Sadovska Ukrainian Fatigue. All the recordings will soon be released on the YouTube channel of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

Book Arsenal is organized in cooperation with Art Arsenal Community NGO. The project is supported by Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of the United Kingdom, Estonia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States of America, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden.

Book Arsenal — 2024 is also held with the financial support of the Ministry of State for Culture and the Media of Germany within the project Exchange between German and Ukrainian Literary and Book Sectors.

This is the seventh time that the Antytvir project has been held as part of the International Book Arsenal Festival.

We received 113 applications, both from our regular participants, to whom we are grateful for their longstanding interest, and from new participants who were brave enough to share their thoughts with us for the first time. 97 applications passed the technical selection and have already been published on the Book Arsenal website. All works are presented unedited by the organizers.

The theme of Antytvir-2024 is FRAGILE. Handle with care.

We encouraged participants to reflect on:

• The soft power of vulnerability and its role in life;
• The fragility of both living beings and things;
• Their own experiences of vulnerability, fragility, and sensitivity.

The works of the 20 shortlisted project participants will be translated into English and published in a collection (in both Ukrainian and English) to be published this summer.

The evaluation was made based on the following criteria:

•  Relevance to the topic;
• Authenticity of the idea;
• Structural presentation;
• General literacy.

The texts were reviewed by Yulia Konopliana, a creative writing teacher and speaker of the educational program for teenagers, as well as the project team and the Mystetskyi Arsenal Teen Council.

The contributors to the collection are:

Olha Sheremenko

Alina Cherniavska

Sofia Stefanyshyn

Sofia Tsap

Yekateryna Kravtsova

Yeva Vasylenko

Daryna Herasymiuk

Anna Vinnik

Veronika Ospanova

Krystyna Orikhova

Ksenia Aliekseienko

Maria Kobycheva

Natalia Pozniak

Yulia Vysotenko

Maria Khilinich

Oleksii Tarasov

Karina Moshuk

Viktoria Chudovska

Oleksandra Holdina

Tania Koval

Anna Polehenko

Yulia Panchenko

Sofia Seriohina

The project included an educational program with two components: working with teachers of Ukrainian language and literature and lectures for teenagers participating in the project.

Together with our speakers, the teachers of Ukrainian language and literature worked on developing their skills in designing interactive literature and creative writing lessons for their pupils; explored how to implement non-standard approaches within the school curriculum; and learned how to instill a genuine love for literature and creating texts in their pupils.

The program speakers included: Kateryna Molodyk, methodist at the Smart Osvita NGO, Halyna Tytysh, head of the Smart Osvita NGO, Iryna Pobidash, lecturer of Ukrainian and foreign literature and practical stylistics of the Ukrainian language at the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, PhD and creator of a literary blog.

During the creative writing workshop, the teenagers discovered stories within themselves and searched for the right words to express them; conducted interviews; learned how to work with senses and visual images, how important visuals and variations in graphic language are, and how to enhance the effect by accompanying a story with an illustration.

The program speakers included: Yulia Konopliana, a literary critic, editor, and creative writing mentor; Bohdan Lohvynenko, the founder of Ukraїner, an interviewer, writer, and editor; and Polina Doroshenko, an artist and illustrator.

The project is implemented in cooperation with the Mystetskyi Arsenal Community NGO. The project is supported by the Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Estonia, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

The 12th International Book Arsenal Festival announces the Program, which includes about 160 selected events that will take place in the Old Arsenal building. The events of the Book Arsenal program will become a meeting place for like-minded people: authors, readers, publishers, artists—everyone who works with books. We will meet to talk about our experience: what is happening to us, what is happening to Ukrainian society, what are its concerns, anxieties and hopes, how we can continue being resistant under these conditions.

Book Arsenal will start on Thursday, May 30. On the first day of the festival, 14 events will be held—discussions, presentations, poetry readings, an art therapy workshop and a film performance. On this day, the festival will be open from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. (entrance to the territory will be allowed from 4 p.m.).

The official opening of the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival will take place on May 30 at 5 p.m. The discussion The Edge Inside Us within the focus theme Life on the Edge will continue the program on this day.

The focus theme Life on the Edge, curated by Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko, will be represented in the program by 9 events:

To understand Ukraine, one should be be at the front, visit the front, help the front. To understand Europe, you have to understand Ukraine. This is the edge which is the center. Even if this is the center that bleeds.

Let us listen for this edge. There is not the end of life there. There is the beginning of it there.

Today it seems to us that to get to the frontline takes eight hours by car. But the frontline runs inside us. In fact, it is already inside us.

The Literature Program Bridging the Gap, curated by Olena Huseinova, will present a number of important intellectual events:

There are so many real explosions on this war-torn land. Tactical backpacks are torn, grenades, mines and shells explode. As well as hearts and veins do. Even if we cannot recognize the sound of an explosion, we can recognize the true meanings of words and experiences, we can avoid the randomness of their use. We can go beyond the edges of intermittent indifference, beyond fantasies about distance, the unbridgeable abyss and gap. We can make a simple choice—to listen for voices, for every voice nearby and every distant voice.

The Kids and Teens Program With Eyes Wide Open will be presented by the curator Olya Rusina:

Now our lives are often a combination of extreme emotions and states, a balance between despair and hope, sadness and gratitude; and, after all, it is these feelings, both positive and negative, that we are now holding on to.

Children and teenagers grow up in this as well. Their first experiences have fallen on two years of the full-scale war, ten years of the war in the East, Russia’s occupation of Crimea and many months of the pandemic. And they will not have any other way of growing up.

The Professional Program of Book Arsenal, curated by Oksana Karpiuk, this year also strengthens the international component of the Festival and launches The Book Arsenal Fellowship Program, within which Book Arsenal is visited by the foreign publishers and literary agents interested in Ukrainian book publishing:

In addition to witnessing the fact of the industry development, an extremely interesting task has fallen to us—to explore and reflect on the processes in the book industry, as well as to search for vectors of the development and going beyond the limits that we have not yet managed to overcome.

The Special Program CITIES ON THE EDGE will be presented by The Fifth Kharkiv in cooperation with the Kharkiv Literary Museum. The curator of the program is Yevhenii Stasinevych:

How can we explain the outburst of cultural life in Kharkiv from both Kharkiv and Kyiv perspectives? Why is culture not falling away according to the principle of residuality but is becoming the core of discussions in the public sphere? Why are there even more conversations about history in our lives today—and if this is the case, what is a more precise view of cities and the country as embodiments of the borderlands?

Thus, cities, thus, the edge. And also war and culture. And we are in the middle of it all. Often lacking the exact words, but having a need to speak. So, let the City help us.

The Special Program THE CONTINUITY OF VOICE will be presented by PEN Ukraine:

Sometimes more and more fatigue can be heard in our voice, but we overcome it to speak to the world in the loud and convincing tone of agency.

And we never allow ourselves to be silent because we speak not only for ourselves but also for those who have been deprived of their voices by Russia and those in whom our voice will continue to be heard.

For centuries, the empire pushed us into voicelessness, but finally, we are reclaiming what belongs to us—our names and our voices.

The Publishers’ Program, the largest at the 12th Book Arsenal, will consist of the biggest number of events.

The visual component of the 12th Book Arsenal will be represented by 10 exhibition projects:

• Life on the Edge
• Defilade
• I Put On a Pixel Camo. Stories of Those Who Have Chosen to Fight
• In Memory of Us                                                      
• SIMPLE THINGS by Maryna Talyutto
• PROPER NAMES. VOX POPULI
• Naïve Ukrainian Gardens by Serhii Polezhaka
• Obolonya
• The Dialogues Exhibition. Calligraphy and Font Workshop
• The Pelican. Zhenya Oliinyk’s Personal Exhibition (the exhibition in the Small Gallery of the Mystetskyi Arsenal)

Within the 12th Book Arsenal you will be able to view four book collections: 

•         Collection of Award-Winning Publications of The Best Book Design 2023 Contest
•         Collection of Ukrainian Visual Publications Talking Pictures — 2024
•         Showcasing over 100 Award Winning German Photobooks
•         Books from France — 2024: Books for Children and Teenagers, Comics and Graphic Novels

Online tickets for the 12th Book Arsenal are available for purchase by the link.

Book Arsenal is organized in cooperation with Art Arsenal Community NGO. The project is supported by Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of the United Kingdom, Estonia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States of America, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden.

Book Arsenal — 2024 is also held with the financial support of the Ministry of State for Culture and the Media of Germany within the project Exchange between German and Ukrainian Literary and Book Sectors.

We are pleased to invite journalists to apply for accreditation for the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival, which will open on Thursday, May 30, and run until June 2.

What to expect at the event:

• Book fair (more than 100 publishers and 5 bookstores);
• About 160 events;
• 10 exhibition projects.

To receive accreditation, please provide the following information in the registration form:

• Full name;
• Year of birth;
• Phone number;
• E-mail address;
• Name of the media you represent.

Also, please add links to your previous publications about the Book Arsenal Festival.

The deadline is May 27, 23:59.

On May 29, all accredited media representatives will receive a confirmation e-mail.

Please note that no more than three persons from one media outlet can be accredited.

 Only accredited media representatives with a valid press ID will be able to receive a Press badge and enter the Festival territory.

 The Book Arsenal Press Center working hours:

      May 30: 16:00 – 20:30

      May 31: 10:00 – 20:30

      June 1: 10:00 – 20:30

      June 2: 10:00 – 18:00

Address: 10-12 Lavrska St., the Mystetskyi Arsenal Museum Shop.

After the event, please send your materials about the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival to: [email protected]

PROGRAM OF EVENTS

SAFETY AND EMERGENCY SHELTER MAP

The International Book Arsenal Festival is organized in cooperation with the Mystetskyi Arsenal Community NGO. The project is supported by the Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of the United Kingdom, Estonia, Canada, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

Book Arsenal – 2024 is also held with the financial support of the Ministry of State for Culture and the Media of Germany within the project Exchange between German and Ukrainian Literary and Book Sectors.

See you at Book Arsenal!

Book Arsenal and BolognaBookPlus, an offshoot of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, that works with the global book publishing, present a collection of Ukrainian visual books within the Talking Pictures initiative, which is devoted to the visual book and modern book publishing for the adult audience.

For participation in the Talking Pictures initiative, the Book Arsenal team accepted the editions that were published during 2021-2024 by Ukrainian publishing houses and created by Ukrainian authors, illustrators, designers, and photographers for the adult audience.

Based on the editions received from Book Arsenal, the international jury of the Talking Pictures initiative compiled a collection of 54 visual editions for the adult audience, that were exhibited at this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair on April 8-11 and will also be presented at the 12th Book Arsenal from May 30 to June 2 this year.

From them the international jury chose the winner—the Telegraf Design series of periodicals from Projector Publishing. The author of the visual solution of this edition is invited to attend the  Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2025.

Special mentions were awarded to:

• NIKIFOR by Myroslava Mudrak from the RODOVID publishing house and the Ukrainian Museum in New York (2023),
• The God of Freedom by Yuliya Musakovska from The Old Lion Publishing House (2021),
• Hometown by Ruslana Kliuchko, self-published (2023).

The representatives of the international jury commented on their decision in the following way.

Steven Guarnaccia, a member of the international jury:

“A book, reduced to one-by-one successive images on a screen, is transformed when experienced in the context of the book-object, for which they were created. The role of context is crucial. A book of photos which might in one context convey one idea, with a change in context—the addition or change in title, the production values through which it is expressed—can convey something entirely different. The jury was astonished (there’s really no other word for it) by the extraordinary quality overall of the printing and production. This would be worthy of note at any time, but especially during a time of war, the commitment to excellence in every respect: content, design, paper, printing and production—was exemplary.”

Neil Packer, a member of the international jury:

“It was an honor and a privilege to be asked to help select a winner for Talking Pictures 2024. The breadth and depth of the entries was remarkable and in many cases the subject matter was profoundly moving. It was very difficult trying to find a single winner and just 3 special mentions from so many strong contenders. Of course the ongoing war in Ukraine is present to a greater or lesser extent in all of these books even if it is not the subject matter, but I think and hope that we have judged these books purely as books. Of what a book can be, of what a book can do, as an object, but we must also consider what is its function? and how it serves that function. 

The winning entries are of course very beautiful books, unique as ideas and stunning examples of design, but they also function perfectly in terms of conveying their content and thus perhaps fulfilling all of the criteria for outstanding books.”

Oksana Karpiuk, the manager of professional programs of Book Arsenal, distinguished the value of the Talking Pictures initiative and the opportunity to attract attention to Ukrainian visual editions at the international level:

“It is very important for the International Book Arsenal Festival to support the visual culture of the Ukrainian publishing sector, as well as to distinguish the professionals who, despite the full-scale war, maintain the high quality of book design, relying on a long-term tradition. We are grateful to BolognaBookPlus that this year Ukraine has been chosen as the focus country of the Talking Pictures initiative, we will be glad to share the collection and its winners with the visitors of this year’s Book Arsenal in Kyiv.

As for the winner, Telegraph is a series of magazines about Ukrainian visual culture that was launched shortly before the full-scale invasion. It is very interesting that a magazine as an editorial format (along with reporting and poetry) is an excellent genre for reflecting current processes in the situation in which circumstances change quickly and unpredictably, compared to a book that requires a certain temporal distance for deeper reflection. Telegraph, Nikifor and Hometown were on the list of winners of our Best Book Design Contest in 2022 and 2023.”

The full list of Ukrainian visual books included in the Talking Pictures collection can be found here: 

Talking Pictures 2024

Bologna Children’s Book Fair is three global book events for the international trade in rights and licenses that take place annually in the eponymous Italian city, where culture interacts with style and commercial relations are established.

BolognaBookPlus (BBPlus) was launched by the BCBF/BolognaFiere in 2020 in collaboration with the Italian Publishers Association (AIE) to reach the global book publishing audience through a three-day program of the exhibition, training, conferences and other opportunities that occur in parallel with the well-known Bologna Children’s Book Fair on April 8-10, 2024. Led by the Guest Director Jacks Thomas and supported by the UK team, BolognaBookPlus works closely with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair team.

Talking Pictures is a collaboration between Hamelin Association and Steven Guarnaccia, conceived in 2018 in partnership with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Publishers Weekly, on the occasion of the first New York Rights Fair, to explore the cultural importance and ongoing impact of the contemporary international visual book. Talking Pictures aims to fully explore this rich territory, in which various sectors of book publishing, for adult and children interconnect and cross-pollinate, thus giving life to new forms of visual language and new literary and publishing entities, encompassing the full range of areas of creative expression. It is interested in those books that blur the borders between contemporary commercial publishing and the latest currents in small-press book-making. Talking Pictures 2024 focuses on one region, Ukraine.

The Strategic Communications Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will join the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival as a program partner. In particular, the UAF StratCom will co-organize the exhibition project I Put On a Pixel Camo. Stories of Those Who Have Chosen to Fight and will present the documentary Resilience and Unity. Writers Explain How Not to Lose the Future.

The I Put On a Pixel Camo exhibition project will present portraits of Ukrainian men and women who have applied their civilian skills in the military, put on uniforms and continued their professional path in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Based on a series of stories recorded by the UAF StratCom, Mari Kinovych, a well-known Ukrainian illustrator, created a series of portraits of military personnel who made a conscious choice to fight and use their profession to defend their motherland.

“For Mystetskyi Arsenal, the program partnership with the Ukrainian Armed Forces is of great importance. It is an honor for us to join forces with the General Staff’s StratCom, as the fate of our country, and therefore our culture, directly depends on the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We would like to help those of us who search for an answer to the question: How can I be useful in defense of my country? Thus, we have tried to initiate such a conversation through the real stories of Ukrainian women and men embodied in the illustrations by Mari Kinovych, which you will be able to see soon at the Book Arsenal Festival,” comments on the partnership Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, Director General of Mystetskyi Arsenal.

In addition to the I Put on a Pixel Camo exhibition project, during the Book Arsenal Festival, the UAF StratCom will hold a premiere screening of the documentary Resilience and Unity. Writers Explain How Not to Lose the Future. The film analyzes the significance of literature in the context of hybrid warfare and emphasizes the role of writers in shaping the national consciousness and the country’s cultural backbone. The experts of the film include: Volodymyr Yermolenko, Oksana Zabuzhko, Serhiy Zhadan, Oleksandr Mykhed, Iryna Tsilyk, and Artem Chekh. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion.

“The program partnership between the UAF StratCom and Mystetskyi Arsenal opens up new opportunities for dialogue between the military and artistic communities on key aspects of national resilience, which, in turn, is the core of national security. In this context, the exhibition project I Put on a Pixel Camo and the premiere of the documentary Resilience and Unity, followed by a panel discussion, will become not just cultural events but also an educational forum where crucial issues of information security, the impact of hybrid warfare, and the role of the intellectual elite in strengthening society will be discussed,” says Colonel Artemii Katkov, project coordinator at the UAF StratCom.

This year, the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival will be held from May 30 (the evening of the official opening) to June 2. The festival will consist of the program component and the book fair, which will take place on the first floor of the Old Arsenal building.

 Mystetskyi Arsenal is Ukraine’s flagship cultural institution that brings together various arts – from contemporary art, new music and theater to literature and museum development. The mission of Mystetskyi Arsenal is to contribute to modernization of Ukrainian society and Ukraine’s integration into the global context based on the axiological potential of culture. Being an annual project of Mystetskyi Arsenal, the International Book Arsenal Festival is an intellectual event in Ukraine, where the book, literary, visual, musical, and theatrical scenes develop and interact.

UAF StratCom is a military command body responsible for organizing, coordinating, and overseeing the implementation of strategic communications activities within the Ukrainian Armed Forces.