Gothenburg Book Fair Fellowship Program (2024)

About the Programme

• They strive to create a program that offers a wide range of aspects of Swedish literature and the Swedish book market. The program is partly scheduled and partly open to individual meetings. Translators and publishers will get separate programs, with occasional joint activities.
  • For publishers
    • The scheduled part includes meetings on themes and trends in contemporary Swedish literature, the Swedish book market and Swedish literature from an international perspective. It also includes round table meetings with Swedish editors and other activities to enhance in-depth discussions as well as building relations between book professionals from all over the world.
  • For translators
    • The scheduled part includes meetings on different aspects of the Swedish language, discussions on translation related topics and a Q&A session on support for translators of Swedish literature.
    • The program starts on Wednesday, the day before the book fair, and ends on Friday, the last of the professional days of the book fair. The hotel is booked from Wednesday to Saturday.
    • All the lectures and meetings will be held in English, except for the translator events.
    • Translators who do not want to participate in the program and instead want to visit the book fair on their own, can apply for travel, hotel and seminar card within the ordinary grant for translators.
  • All Fellows
    • All Fellows will meet for an introduction meeting the first day, as well as for dinner on Thursday and a sum up on Friday, followed by a farewell dinner. In between the scheduled meetings and events, there will be plenty of time for individual programs, to meet agents in the Rights Centre or visit the many seminars at the book fair.

Funding Information

• The grant will cover a part of your travel cost, three nights’ hotel accommodation, and entrance card to all seminars at the Gothenburg Book Fair.
• You apply to take part in the whole programme. The dates are fixed, arrival on September 25 and departure on September 28. Depending on whether you live in Europe or outside Europe, two different travel sums will be granted. If you are travelling from Europe, the travel grant sum is SEK 3 000, and if you are travelling from outside of Europe the sum is SEK 10 000. (They are aware that this might not cover the whole travel cost, but the grant should be seen as a contribution to the travel costs). The Swedish Arts Council takes care of the hotel reservation and hotel payment. The travel grant will be paid to the applicant organisation’s account (or translator’s account), and the applicant makes his/her own travel arrangements.
• You can apply for this grant once a year.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to apply you must be a translator from Swedish, or a publisher or sub-agent who is interested in working with Swedish literature in translation. You must also be willing to take part in the whole programme. Since the programme is in English they need the participants to have a sufficient command of English in speech and writing.
• A requirement for publishers/sub-agents is that you must run a commercial operation. (This requirement does not, however, apply to translators, instead they need to have had at least one book published, translated from Swedish.) Priority will be given to those who have not previously attended the fair.

For more information, visit Swedish Arts Council.