The Book Arsenal festival announces an open call for participation in the Antytvir-2026 project. All works by participating teenagers will be published on the Book Arsenal website!

Antytvir is a project for teenagers in grades 8-11 who write, draw works or create illustrations to them, using non-standard approaches. The project is held within the International Book Arsenal Festival.

The theme of this year’s Antytvir is Inflation of Words. Its authors are participants of Litlab Teens of the Mystetskyi Arsenal, a creative writing laboratory for teenagers.

Sometimes you are at a loss for words to express your thoughts, worries and feelings. Sometimes you repeat the same word over and over again, but nothing changes. Then no words seem to make sense anymore and you need to search for new ways of expression

— the authors say.

The essay on the project theme can be read at the link.

While working on your piece for the project, we suggest you consider the following:

• is it time for us to give up words? Or, on the contrary, do we need to remaster the art of eloquence?
• can words still comfort in difficult times, influence one’s mind and change the world?
• the words which stay with us longer than the news, longer than the light above our heads, and even longer than the people we care about.

To participate in the Antytvir-2026 project, you have to:

• be a student of grades 8-11;
• attach your work to the Google form. Your text has to be in Ukrainian or English, up to 15,000 characters with spaces in pdf format. Your image has to be in jpeg format. You can submit only a text, an illustration or an illustrated text. Only one work will be considered.
• do not forget to grant access to your file on the file sharing service in view mode.

The deadline is April 19, 23:59. Upon the technical selection of works (checking for compliance with the language, text volume and image format), the works will be published on the Book Arsenal website. 10 participants will be shortlisted by our teenage jury. They will get the opportunity to attend events of the International Book Arsenal Festival and to participate in the workshop on creating a joint zine from their own Antytvir pieces.

The project also includes an educational program for teachers that will take place in April. The program consists of a series of online meetings with experts in the field of education.

View the works of previous years here:

• Antytvir–2025
• Antytvir–2024
• Antytvir–2022

The media partners: Osvitoria, EdEra, Learn.Media.

The Leipzig Book Fair 2026—the most important spring event for the book and media industry—starts in Leipzig (Germany) today, on March 19. Ukraine has been a full participant and an important focus of the Leipzig Book Fair for the past few years. The Leipzig Book Fair 2026 program is designed for 4 days and will run until March 22.

With the support of the fair’s organizers, Ukraine is represented at this year’s Leipzig Book Fair with the National Stand, which is organized by the Ukrainian Book Institute and located in Hall 4, Stand D311.

The Ukrainian Stage will be an important part of the Stand; discussions, readings and presentations on the topics of the war, the culture of remembrance, language, identity, the environmental consequences of the war and Ukraine’s ties with Europe will take place there.

The Ukrainian program will be held under the slogan Filling In, which reflects the desire to fill in the historical and cultural gaps in the global perception of Ukraine.

Within the National Stand, the Mystetskyi Arsenal will present its own selection of exhibition-related book publications, souvenir products and information about the history of the institution and the International Book Arsenal Festival, and will also co-organize a number of events to take place on the stage of the National Stand, on other central stages of the fair and in the premises of the Leipzig Town Hall.

Events Schedule of the Mystetskyi Arsenal

Thursday, March 19, 2026

3:15 p.m.-4:15 p.m. Ukraine. Filling In

Opening of the National Stand of Ukraine | Participants: Astrid Böhmisch, Wolfram Weimer, Sönke Rix, Skadi Jennicke, Volodymyr Sheiko, Yuliia Kozlovets

Location: Ukrainian National Stand (Hall 4, D311)

Friday, March 20, 2026 

11 a.m.-11:50 a.m.

The Future of Endangered Languages

Discussion | Participants: Flurina Badel, Ostap Slyvynskyi and Mamure Choban

Location: Ukrainian National Stand (Hall 4, D311)

3:00 p.m.-3:50 p.m.

When Everyday Life Becomes History: Literature, Memory, and Forgetting

Discussion | Participants: Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, Georgi Gospodinov and Ostap Slyvynskyi

Location: Donau-Bühne (Hall 4, D300/C301)

5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Cultural Management, Translations, Literary Festivals, Book Fairs in Central and Southeastern Europe

Professional Roundtable | Participants: Robert Şerban (RO), Marilena Tudor (RO), Mariana Porobic (HR), Yuliia Kozlovets (UA), Svetlozar Zhelev (BG)

Location: National Stand of Romania (Hall 4, D401/E400)

Saturday, March 21, 2026

2:00 p.m.-2:50 p.m.

Reactors Do Not Explode. A Brief History of the Chornobyl Disaster

Discussion | Participants: Yuliia Kozlovets, Kateryna Mikhalitsyna and Claudia Dathe

Location: Ukrainian National Stand (Hall 4, D311)

4:00 p.m.-4:50 p.m.

When the Earth Trembles: War, Ecology, and the Stories We Tell

Discussion | Participants: Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, Adrian Ivakhiv, Darya Tsymbaliuk and Philip Hall

Location: Ukrainian National Stand (Hall 4, D311)

Sunday, March 22, 2026

12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.

When the World Quakes: How Words Can Protect Children

Discussion | Participants: Viktoriia Murovana, Kateryna Mikhalitsyna and Claudia Dathe

Location: Ukrainian National Stand (Hall 4, D311)

3:00 p.m.-3:50 p.m.

Where the Earth Changes: Artistic Perspectives on the Ecological Wounds of War

Discussion | Participants: Franziska Davies, Asia Bazdyrieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta and Adrian Ivakhiv

Location: Ukrainian National Stand (Hall 4, D311)

6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.

When the Land Breaks. Stories, Images, and Practices of Ecological Witnessing

Discussion | Participants: Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, Asia Bazdyrieva, Kateryna Botanova, Adrian Ivakhiv and Hannes Rassmann

Location: Stadt Leipzig Town Hall

The award ceremony for the winners of this year’s The Most Beautiful Books of the World, the international competition organized by the German Foundation Buchkunst, will also be held within the Leipzig Book Fair program. This year, the award’s shortlist includes the Ukrainian book Do You Read Me? On Communication and Understanding Each Other of the art studio Agrafka (Romana Romanyshyn, Andriy Lesiv) and the Old Lion Publishing House. The complete collection of the winning books of our Best Book Design – 2025 contest will be exhibited at the Foundation’s stand throughout the fair.

The full schedule of events for the Ukrainian program can be found at the link.

The Ukrainian program at the Leipzig Book Fair is organized by the Ukrainian Book Institute, Goethe-Institut Ukraine and the House of Europe program, the Ukrainian Institute, the Mystetskyi Arsenal and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb)) in cooperation with international partners. The Ukrainian Stand at the Leipzig Book Fair was made possible thanks to funding from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, as well as to the support from the city of Leipzig, NUMO and the German Federal Foreign Office.

Mystetskyi Arsenal is a leading Ukrainian cultural institution that integrates various types of art in its activities—from contemporary art, new music and theater to literature and museum work. The mission of the Mystetskyi Arsenal is to contribute to the modernization of Ukrainian society and the integration of Ukraine into the world context, relying on the value-based potential of culture.

International Book Arsenal Festival is an international event organized by the Mystetskyi Arsenal. The festival has been held since 2011, and over this decade it 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.

Leipzig Book Fair is the most important spring event for the book and media industry, bringing together readers with authors, publishers and media companies from Germany and around the world. They all come to Leipzig to explore a diverse range of literature, to discover innovations and new perspectives.

To Bear Your Freedom is the Focus Theme of the 14th International Book Arsenal Festival, which will take place on May 28-31 at the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

 The curator of the Focus Theme is Maksym Butkevych — Ukrainian journalist, human rights activist and war veteran. After Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Maksym joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and in June 2022 he was captured by Russian troops. A few months later, a Russian court sentenced him to 13 years in prison on trumped-up charges.

While Maksym Butkevych was in captivity, his colleagues published a collection of his texts Am richtigen Platz: Ein ukrainischer Friedensaktivist im Krieg (In the Right Place: A Ukrainian Peace Activist at War) in French and German.

In October 2024, after spending 2 years and 4 months in Russian captivity, Maksym Butkevych was released. In 2025, Maksym became a co-founder of the charity foundation The Principle of Hope and was awarded the Václav Havel Prize by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Maksym Butkevych. Photo: Daria Lanova

Maksym Butkevych reveals the sense of this year’s Focus Theme To Bear Your Freedom in his curatorial essay.

“Freedom is absolute. Because no one can completely deprive us of it. Because even when we cannot choose the conditions in which we find ourselves, we can choose our attitude towards them, as Viktor Frankl wrote, choose our thoughts and views of the world. As long as we exist, so does our freedom. The freedom of choices we make every day and at every moment with what the course of events, other beings and ourselves provided us, and this freedom cannot be taken away from us, and we cannot get rid of it. But along with it, we cannot get rid of the responsibility for the choices we make: each choice bears responsibility for its justification and consequences. Freedom is what we bear within ourselves, whether we want it or not, even if sometimes this burden may seem heavy. However, it is precisely by bearing it that we bring it into the world and realize it, embody it in our choices and actions. And even when a person chooses not to make a choice, this is also a choice, and the responsibility for it remains with the person. Responsibility is the Siamese twin of freedom, one whole with it and, like in case of freedom, there is no escape from it. Freedom to treat, freedom to think, act, create ― everyone has their own responsibility, originating from the word response―to the question about the grounds and justification for the realization of our freedom. This response must be worthy.”

— Curator of the Focus Theme of the 14th Book Arsenal Maksym Butkevych.

“Every year, we, as the Mystetskyi Arsenal team, ask ourselves the question: who, whose thoughts and ideas embody what we call the nerve of time. Who can ask such a question that resonates with the moment we are living in? Whose life path is a great story in itself? This year, we were unanimous: it is Maksym Butkevych. His judgements about freedom and its weight, even its heaviness, about how much one has to give up for it, about the fragility of a hero and people’s tendency to delegate all responsibility and burdens to this imaginary demigod, about how much strength, perseverance, stubbornness it takes to bear one’s freedom―all of them resonate very deeply. We argued about what would be more accurate: to bear, to bring forth or to endure freedom. However, we have agreed that freedom is a burden, but there is something in this word that resembles the lightness of a gonfalon fluttering in the wind high above your head. That is why we have chosen exactly this variant ― to bear your freedom.”

— Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta

This year, the Writer’s Program returns to Book Arsenal. It will be curated by serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, volunteer, poet, prose writer and translator Andriy Lyubka.

Andriy Lyubka. Photo: Serhii Handusenko

The Main Program of this year’s Festival will be curated by cultural manager, lecturer in literature courses, researcher of intertextual and intercultural connections Valentyna Sotnykova.

Valentyna Sotnykova. Photo: Oleksandr Popenko

The Kids Program, curated by writer, journalist and translator Olya Rusina, will also take place within Book Arsenal.

Olya Rusina. Photo: Oleksandr Popenko

The Special Teens Program is being prepared by participants of LitLab Teens and the Youth Council of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

The Professional Program will be run by manager of cultural and educational projects, editor, literary scholar Yuliia Konopliana.

Yuliia Konopliana. Photo: Oleksandr Popenko

The 14th Book Arsenal will host the Festival of First Plays and the Veterans Theater with a special program.

The third season of the Book Arsenal Fellowship Program will be coordinated by project manager Mariia Surzhenko. It will be a platform for B2B meetings and introductions of foreign publishers, rights managers and literary agents to the Ukrainian book market.

Mariia Surzhenko. Photo: Daria Lanova

Publishers will also hold independent events within the Book Arsenal program.

The Festival’s identity was traditionally developed by the Mystetskyi Arsenal design team led by Art Director Lera Guievska.

“The Focus Theme of this year’s Festival is visually revealed by the image of a flag fluttering in the wind. We bear our freedom just as we carry a flag—openly and high. This is our visible position. Our responsibility. Our continuity. Generations before us fought for this freedom, our society fights for it every day. The color scheme refers to the heavenly gradients. After all, everyone who strives for freedom imagines a clear sky above them—a space free from earthly things. The clear sky above our heads is an image of the freedom we defend and strive for every day. This is a space without limitations, this is a space for action, this is a space for the future.”

—Art Director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal Lera Guievska.

Lera Guievska. Photo: Oleksandr Popenko

Suspilne Ukraine will become the general information partner of the 14th Book Arsenal.

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.

Frankfurter Buchmesse in cooperation with the International Book Arsenal Festival and Goethe-Institut Ukraine announce the open call for the fifth season of the Special Programme for publishers from Ukraine and neighbouring countries.

This year the Special Programme is being given a new name: «VOLIA — Special Programme for Publishers from Ukraine and Neighbouring Countries».

For us, Ukrainians,“Volia” is more than freedom — it is a fundamental national code that unites independence, courage, and the strength to resist. It is inner resilience and the readiness to defend one’s destiny and values. Today, Volia reflects the unbreakable will of the Ukrainian people to defend our country and win, and the determination of our publishers to continue their work in the hardest circumstances. This programme carries that spirit beyond borders, strengthening regional cooperation and uniting the international publishing community in solidarity. Inspired by Volia, we affirm that culture, like freedom, endures — and moves forward together

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

Photo: © Frankfurter Buchmesse, Nurettin Ciçek

Who can apply?

As in the previous years, publishers, editors, foreign rights managers and literary agents from Armenia, Bulgaria, Czechia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine can apply for the programme. This year, publishing professionals from the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are also eligible.

15 publishing professionals from all eligible countries will be selected for the programme.

The programme will take place from 4 to 10 October 2026 in Frankfurt.

The participation in the Programme includes:

• preparatory online seminars with advice on participation in Frankfurter Buchmesse and presentations of the book markets of the countries participating in the Programme;
• one-day seminar with experts of the German book market;
• participation in the official opening of Frankfurter Buchmesse;
• numerous events and opportunities for establishing professional contacts with international partners during Frankfurter Buchmesse;
• “VOLIA Networking Market” with 1:1 meetings for programme’s alumnae and alumni at Frankfurter Buchmesse.

Participation requirements:

• at least two years of professional experience in publishing with a focus on rights and licensing trade;
• a good command of English;
• selected participants must confirm their availability during the whole duration of the programme.

The Programme covers participants’ expenses for accommodation in Frankfurt and meals (partially); book fair tickets; participants will also be able to apply for reimbursement of travel expenses.

You can apply for participation in the Programme via online form on the Frankfurter Buchmesse website. The deadline for applications is 10 April 2026.

TO APPLY

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

The Special Programme for Publishers from Ukraine and neighboring countries is subject to financial support by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Information partner in Ukraine — Chytomo.

As part of the international CELA project, the workshop Translation as a Collaborative Art brought together translators from different countries. The participants discussed literary translation as a collective artistic practice as well as a tool for cultural dialogue.

The workshop was held in cooperation with the NGO TRANSLATORIUM. Its representatives, Veronika Yadukha and Yuliia Didokha, spoke about the organization’s key areas of work: translation residencies, artistic projects, the annual Literary Translation Festival, and other initiatives aimed at protecting translators’ rights and developing a sustainable professional ecosystem.

The practical part of the workshop was dedicated to translating Ukrainian poetry. Working in groups, participants translated texts by Maksym Kryvtsov, Viktoriia Amelina, Iia Kiva, and Lesyk Panasiuk into various languages, discussing rhythm, emotional resonance, and cultural contexts.

Among the challenges of poetic translation, the following were highlighted:

• preserving the sound of the text,
• adapting rhythm and stress patterns across different languages,
• working with symbols and culturally specific imagery.

Key takeaways from the workshop on translation as a collaborative practice:

• Collaborative translation is best realized in formats such as festivals, residencies, readings, and cultural events, as these help build strong professional communities.
• Translator residencies are not only a way to develop professional networks but also to form friendships. This format brings people together and creates a space where participants can feel comfortable and safe.
• Artistic projects by the NGO TRANSLATORIUM are usually built at the intersection of different art forms — literature, theater, music, and others. Such interdisciplinary collaboration can help explain concepts and phenomena that are important or difficult to translate.
• Using collaborative translation techniques — working on a text in pairs with another translator — opens up new interpretations and helps find compelling equivalents. For example, translators discussed how different languages might render distinctly Ukrainian words such as “chortopolokh” or “posadka”.
• Even when working with a translator who translates into a language different from your own, it is still possible to jointly discuss the emotional, stylistic, and sonic aspects of poetry.

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.

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 15 to 19. The institution’s team will dedicate its stand to the concept Everything is Translation, which was the Focus Theme of the XIII Book Arsenal.

Every year, Mystetskyi Arsenal presents its stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair. For us, it is an invaluable opportunity to introduce Arsenal and our activities, but most importantly — to highlight Ukrainian culture. The Frankfurt Book Fair is a hub of thousands of connections, and our publications — from catalogues on Boichukism and Ukrainian Futurism to studies of Les Kurbas and a full series on Ukrainian artists of the 1990s–2000s — consistently spark genuine interest among both professionals and the broader public.

This year, we are also joining the Ukrainian program in Frankfurt with the Focus Theme of Book Arsenal 2025, confident that Ukrainian authors have much to contribute to the world’s largest international book fair

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, Director General of Mystetskyi Arsenal, said.

At stand J83 of Mystetskyi Arsenal, located in Hall 3.1 within the Art. ArtBook. Design section of the fair and provided on a partnership basis by the organizers, visitors will be able to explore Mystetskyi Arsenal catalogues, promotional materials of the International Book Arsenal Festival, as well as a range of souvenir items. The festival’s main metaphor and Focus Theme this year, Everything is Translation, will be reflected in the stand’s visual identity. Relevant aspects of this theme for the international audience — translation of experiences and the search for a language of understanding in a constantly changing world — will also be explored in the events of the Ukrainian program at the national stand.

Mystetskyi Arsenal’s participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, with both its stand and program of events, has been made possible through the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.

This year, for the fourth time, a Special Program for publishers from Ukraine and neighboring countries will take place. Organized by the Frankfurt Book Fair in cooperation with Book Arsenal and the Goethe-Institut Ukraine, the program provides opportunities for intensive training and networking for publishers, editors, licensing managers, and literary agents from Ukraine, Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Within the program, 15 participants—five from Ukraine—will take part in the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair, join networking events, attend seminars led by professionals from the German book market, and participate in a rich schedule of events at the national stands of the participating countries. The program was launched in 2022 and is made possible with financial support from the German Federal Foreign Office.

The Mystetskyi Arsenal team has once again contributed to the development of the Ukrainian program, which will feature authors, journalists, and artists. This year’s Focus Theme of Ukraine’s National Stand is Filling in. Ukraine is filling the gaps on the European cultural map, revealing new dimensions of its literature and history. We present editions of Ukrainian classics in foreign languages, broaden the understanding of our geography and cultural heritage, revive forgotten names, and highlight authors without whom European literature would remain incomplete.

Alongside Mystetskyi Arsenal, Ukraine will also be represented at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair by the Ukrainian Book Institute and the collective stand of Ukrainian publishers, the Goethe-Institut Ukraine and the Ukrainian Institute, as well as publishing house Creative Women Publishing, winner of the Chytomo Award.

The project was made possible through the support of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media of Germany (des Beauftragten für Medien und Kultur), the Frankfurt Book Fair, the German Publishers Association (Börsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels), the Federal Agency for Civic Education of Germany, the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, the International Renaissance Foundation, the NGO Horizon Without Borders, the Embassy of Ukraine in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Consulate General of Ukraine in Frankfurt am Main, Cultural Forces, and the Coordination Center in Frankfurt am Main.

The full program of Ukrainian events at the Frankfurt Book Fair is available via the link.

Mystetskyi Arsenal is a leading Ukrainian cultural institution that integrates various types of art in its activities—from contemporary art, new music and theater to literature and museum work. The mission of the Mystetskyi Arsenal is to contribute to the modernization of Ukrainian society and the integration of Ukraine into the world context, relying on the value-based potential of culture.

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.

From August 29 to September 7, 2025, the PIC Conference, a festival of illustration and design, took place as part of the international Network Eastern European Design (NEED) festival, for the first time in Ukraine

Ten days filled with inspiring encounters, art, knowledge exchange, discoveries, and creative energy:

• Over 30 offline and online events
• Participants from more than 10 countries
• Hundreds of works featured in the international exhibition
• Hundreds of visitors united by a shared passion for visual culture

August 29 – September 7, 2025

Mystetskyi Arsenal became a vibrant hub for designers, illustrators, curators, researchers, and everyone engaged with visual communication. The exhibition showcased some of the best practices in contemporary illustration, poster art, book design, and animation — with works from Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Ukraine, and the Netherlands.

August 30 — Conference Day

The international PIC Conference 2025 program brought together a remarkable lineup of speakers. Jesús Cisneros, Ana Margarida Matos, Barbora Müllerová, Stefan Dybus, Zosia Dzierżawska, Tanya Yakunova, and Zhenya Oliinyk shared their visions of how visual storytelling shapes cultural identity, addresses urgent social themes, and evolves within commercial creative practices.

Networking sessions

August 31 and September 6–7 were dedicated to professional exchange, new connections, portfolio reviews, workshops, presentations, and idea sharing between creative industry professionals from across Ukraine and Europe.

Huge thanks to everyone who created, joined, and supported PIC Conference 2025.
Special gratitude goes to the partners, volunteers, and everyone who believes in the power of visual language.

Photo by Nastya Telikova, Andriy Tsykota

Organizers: Pictoric, PGD, 6 pt, Mystetskyi Arsenal.

The Creative Europe Programme supports the event.

Partners: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Polish Institute in Kyiv, Goethe-Institut in Ukraine, Book Arsenal, Kuš!, NAFFA, Czech Center in Kyiv, Megapolis+

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 fourth season of the Special Program for Publishers from Ukraine and Neighboring Countries. The publishers, editors, rights managers and literary agents from Ukraine, Armenia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Romania, Moldova, Slovak Republic and Poland will:

— participate in the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024;
— join networking events;
— take part in seminars from professionals of the German book market.

Participants in 2024. Photo: © Frankfurter Buchmesse, Nurettin Ciçek

To participate in the fourth season of the program, which will take place on October 13-18, 15 participants, 5 of whom are from Ukraine, were selected, namely:

1. Victoriya Matyusha, Literary Agency OVO

2. Yaroslava Yudina, TBOOKS Publishing House LLC

3. Nataliia Davydenko, Ukraїner Publishing House

4. Bohdan Martynenko, Chitarium Publishing LLC

5. Nataliia Klymchuk, Anetta Antonenko Publishers

Foreign participants:

1. Anna Chitchyan, Zangak Publishing House, Armenia

2. Gergana Pancheva, Sofia Literary Agency, Bulgaria

3. Pavlína Juračková, Nakladatelství Paseka s.r.o., Czech Republic

4. Nuca Metreveli, Polynomial Books, Georgia

5. Eszter Balázs, Central Publishing Group, Hungary

6. Assel Sapakova, Kazformoms, Kazakhstan

7. Eli Bădică, Nemira Publishing House, Romania

8. Paula Erizanu, CARTIER Publishing House, Moldova

9. Peter Michalík, Monokel, Slovak Republic

10. Agata Picheta, DEBIT Publishing House, Poland

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

We invite journalists to apply for accreditation for the 13th Book Arsenal, which will start on Thursday, May 29, and will last until June 1 inclusive at the Mystetskyi Arsenal (10-12 Lavrska St.)

You are in for:

• more than 200 events of the Festival program, including the Focus Theme program, the Main Program, separate curatorial and special programs, as well as publishers’ programs: discussions, lectures, readings, workshops, meetings with authors, music and performance events
• 17 exhibition projects
• book fair—100 large, 11 small publishing houses and 6 bookstores, as well as partner stands of military and volunteer initiatives. This year, the Illustrators’ Fair returns to Book Arsenal

To obtain accreditation, please enter the following information in the registration form:

• full name
• year of birth
• passport details (ID number)
• phone number
• email address
• name of the media you represent.

Add links to your previous publications about Book Arsenal as well.

REGISTRATION FORM

The deadline for filling out the accreditation form is May 26, 12 p.m.

On May 27, all accredited media representatives will receive a confirmation email. Please, check your spam folder.

Please note that no more than three people from one media can obtain accreditation.

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

Hours of the Book Arsenal Press Center:

May 29: 4:00 p.m. — 8:30 p.m.
May 30: 10:00 a.m. — 8:30 p.m.
May 31: 10:00 a.m. — 8:30 p.m.
June 1: 10:00 a.m. — 6:00 p.m.

Address of the Press Center: 10-12 Lavrska St., Museum shop of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

After the Festival is over, please send links to your publications about the 13th Book Arsenal to the following email address: [email protected]

SAFETY RULES AND EVACUATION SCHEME

Suspilne will be the general information partner of the 13th Book Arsenal.

Book Arsenal is organized in cooperation with Art Arsenal Community NGO. The Festival is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation.

The Festival is supported by the Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of Canada, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The Book Arsenal’s Focus Theme program is co-organized by Documenting Ukraine, the program of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM Vienna). The development of the Focus Theme was also supported by the US Embassy in Ukraine.

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.”

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.