Networking book people
Running back-to-back, directly after the Thessaloniki Book Fair, the second pan-European conference on books and a meeting of Greek novelists with European publishers and critics took a large contingent of book people on to Porto Carras. Both events offered a heady program. The conference explored national book policy in an endeavor to shape a common book policy in the enlarged European Union. Topics ranged from the impact of the Google Print plan to digitize books to campaigns promoting books and reading, training for book professionals and funding for translations. At the seminar, leading Greek writers Takis Theodoropoulos, Ioanna Karystiani, Petros Markaris, Costas Mourselas, Vangelis Hadziyiannidis and Dimitris Mingas answered questions and got to know some of the people who promote Greek literature abroad. It was the opportunity to network that impressed translator David Connolly. «The seminar is a good opportunity for discussion,» he said, «but you also get to make contacts and renew them.» A fish dinner in Porto Carras with publishers ignited his hopes for one of his translations. It’s too early to talk about firm deals, but each author presentation sparked a similar buzz of interest from foreign publishers.
