Malta Book Festival boasts international guests, debuts children’s literature award

The National Book Council has announced that this year’s edition of the Malta Book Festival will take place from 4 to 8 November at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta.

In these five days, the general public will be able to visit the halls of the Mediterranean Conference Centre where both local and foreign publishers will be exhibiting and selling their latest work. As per tradition, local distributors and bookshops will also be present, together with a Parisian bookshop and the Sicilian Publishers Association, thanks to help from the French Embassy in Malta and the Italian Cultural Insitute respectively.

This year too, the Malta Book Festival will be a one of a kind appointment full of cultural and educational activities for all ages. Maltese authors and publishers will be presenting their latest books in a series of events forming part of the Festival’s cultural and educational programme. And for the first time this year, the programme of events will also include activities that celebrate the winners of the National Book Prize, amongst whom, Godfrey Wettinger, winner of the 2014 ‘Lifetime Acheivement Award’.

The National Book Council would also like to announce that this year’s Malta Book Festival special guests are: Marie Darrieussecq, French author; Maram al-Masri, Syrian author residing in Paris; Romanian poet Dan Sociu and his publisher Bogdan Stanescu; and British publisher of the Maltese anthology This Fair Land, Clive Boutle. These special guests will be with us during the Festival and participating in several public events.

Weekday mornings at the Festival are dedicated to visiting school children. Both public and private schools are invited to attend the Festival for the Terramaxka Prize: the Prize for Books for Children and Adolescents.

Every visiting student will be given a €3 voucher that can be redeemed at any Festival stand during their visit. This initiative has been set in motion so as to ensure that every child visiting the Festival with their respective school takes home a book to read and to keep.