Yulia Kozlovets, Image: Book Arsenal Festival
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Registration Is Open for a Ukraine-Focused ‘The Hof’
As Publishing Perspectives readers will recall, we ran our latest interview with Ukraine’s Yulia Kozlovets on April 4, announcing that the staff and colleagues of Kyiv’s International Book Arsenal Festival are planning to stage a 2023 edition of the festival, June 22 to 25, at the capital’s Mystetskyi Arsenal.
Today (May 5), our colleagues at Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 18 to 22) have announced that the particularly articulate, Kozlovets will be the headliner in the May 25 edition of The Hof—the streaming podcast event developed originally by Frankfurt in the depths of the pandemic.
In addition, Peter Kraus vom Cleff—the managing director of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Germany’s publishers and booksellers association—will be on-hand, making an introduction and then handing off to Kozlovets to speak about the Ukrainian book market and latest developments in wartime publishing.
As usual, The Hof will include breakout sessions for all participants, a good chance for networking and discussion.
‘We Need Security, Safety, and Peace’
Kozlovets, the general coordinator of the International Book Arsenal Festival, told Publishing Perspectives on March 3, 2022—just days after Vladimir Putin opened his completely unprovoked assault on Ukraine in 2022, “This is my hometown, where I was born and raised, studied, gave birth to my children, had a lovely private bookshop with my sister, and was managing the best book festival in the world.
“There is actually no place for doing Ukrainian book business now. What we need now is security, safety, and peace.”
Thirteen months later, in speaking to us again, said that the idea of going ahead with a version of the Book Arsenal Festival—primarily a public-facing book event—involves a format that’s intended “to present our visitors with a wide inclusive selection of books from the maximum range of Ukrainian publishing houses, which, in turn, will help support more agents in the industry.
“In addition, the cooperation with local independent bookstores, I hope, will allow us to draw attention to the importance of this particular link in the way of a book from the author to the reader: such bookstores—each with its brand, client approach, the culture of building healthy business relations with publishers, and the strategy of developing local communities around them—deserve greater visibility.”
Kozlovets’ role in programming the Book Arsenal event draws on her experience as the former owner of an independent bookstore and a promoter of children’s literature engaged with education and arts projects.
You can participate in The Hof on May 25 as it airs live from Germany at 16:00 GMT / 11 a.m. ET / and 18:00 Ukraine. Free registration is available here.
Here is all our coverage of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and its impact on the country’s publishing industry, as well as international reactions.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Book Arsenal Festival is here, and more on the international book fairs, festivals, and trade shows in publishing is here. More on the freedom to publish and the freedom of expression is here. And more on Yulia Koslovets and her work is here.