The public is ever more interested in the annual Slovenian Book Fair, which will take place for the 21st time at the conference centre Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana, the chair of its management board Rudi Zaman told the press on Tuesday.
While the fair will open to the general public on 30 November, the grand opening will be held the night before, when an award ceremony is also to take place. The key speaker will be the acclaimed Slovenian writer from Trieste, Boris Pahor.
The fair, closing on 4 December, will feature fewer publishers than before, around 80, due to space problems. Accompanying events will include public debates at the fair's café, forums of publishers, presentations of new books, shows for children and young people, to name a few.
The main topic of the "Publishers' Academy" will be the cooperation of smaller publishers, according to its head Miha Kovac. It will feature lectures by foreign experts, with the US Robert Baensch as the key lecturer. He will discuss publishing at a time of globalisation.
Mitja Zupancic, the head of the Chamber of Commerce's Association of Publishers and Book Traders, pointed to an increasing number of experts taking part a series of debates dubbed "The Bookfinder".
Around 350 experts are expected this year as opposed to 182 in 2004, when the forum was first introduced. Also included in the Bookfinder debates will be a lecture by Andrinee Pollen on the book market and reading culture in Scandinavia.
The main topic of the Bookfinder debates will be the 45th anniversary of the "Bralna znacka" reading competition which encourages reading in Slovenia's elementary schools.
In its first year, the competition included 119 children, while this year around 140,000 pupils with 5,000 supervisors are taking part.
The focus of thirty "Debate Cafés" to take place this year will be on literature and youth, myths, poets among musicians, story-telling, and cross-over literature, such as Harry Potter.
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