This year, Book Arsenal will be held from May 29 (the evening of the official opening) to June 1. The festival will consist of the program component and the book fair on the first floor of the Old Arsenal building.
The festival’s focus theme will be curated by historian, professor of European intellectual history at Yale University Marci Shore, and writer, translator, publisher and member of PEN Ukraine Oksana Forostyna.
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- Marci Shore. Photo by Rostyslav Kostenko
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- Oksana Forostyna. Photo by Oleksandr Popenko
This year, Book Arsenal will be held already for the thirteenth time, and we will take every effort to turn it into the place of the most important conversation that makes Arsenal so special and beloved. The very place where like-minded people meet, where arts and experiences come together, the place of joy and shared sadness, the place of reflection on the most difficult issues that affect everyone in Ukraine. I am very grateful to Marci and Oksana for their work on the focus theme: having the privilege of observing the working process, I am sure that it will be a deep and at the same time global in its breadth conversation. The theme itself will be announced soon—in March
— Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta.
Publishing houses and bookstores are invited to be sales operators at the exhibition-fair; they can offer their conceptions in one of six sections: Art Books, Fiction, Non-fiction, Books for Kids and Teens, Comics and Graphic and Books in Foreign Languages. Special conditions will apply to small publishing houses—those with 2 to 10 published books in their publishing portfolio. We are also returning to the tradition of the Illustrators’ Fair.
The Book Arsenal program, which will be developed by the invited curators, will include events within the festival’s focus theme, the Main Program, the Kids and Teens Program and the Professional Program.
Book Arsenal will host the Translatorium Literary and Translation Festival with the Special Program.
Lectures, discussions, performances, public interviews and poetry readings will take place on seven stages of the festival. We will also present exhibition projects during Book Arsenal.
The Festival will also host 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.
Book Arsenal starts accepting applications for stand participation in the fair. The deadline is February 28, 2025.
By March 21, 2025, all applicants will have received answers about the selection results to the email addresses specified in the applications.
For the safety of the participants of the fair and the events the simplest bomb shelter is available in the Mystetskyi 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.