This year, Book Arsenal was held from May 28 (the evening of the official opening) to May 31. The festival was consist of the program component and the book fair on the first floor of the Old Arsenal building.
The curator of the Focus Theme of the festival was human rights activist, military serviceman, public figure and journalist Maksym Butkevych.
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- Maksym Butkevych. Photo by Anna Putylina
Writer, military serviceman and volunteer Andriy Lyubka curated the Writer’s Program.
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- Andriy Lyubka. Photo by Serhiy Khandusenko
Publishing houses and bookstores were invited to be sales operators at the exhibition-fair. Bookstore book.ua presented selections of books in foreign languages.
Special conditions were applied to small publishing houses—those with 2 to 10 published books in their publishing portfolio. We also invited artists to participate in the Illustrators’ Fair.
The Book Arsenal program, which was developed by invited curators, included events within the Focus Theme of the Festival, the Main Program, the Writer’s Program, the Kids and Teens Program, the Professional Program, as well as performative and musical events. We also presented exhibition projects and special programs of the festival.
The Festival also hosted the annual professional Book Arsenal Fellowship Program for foreign publishers and literary agents, that contributes to strengthening international cooperation with Ukraine in the book field by establishing direct contacts between professionals from Ukraine and abroad and acquainting with the local literary and book scenes.
For the safety of the participants of the fair and the events the simplest bomb shelter was available in the Mystetskyi Arsenal.
RESULTS OF THE 14TH BOOK ARSENAL
The general media partner of the 14th International Book Arsenal Festival will be Suspilne.
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 was organized in cooperation with Art Arsenal Community NGO. The Festival was supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and Mnozhyna Foundation.