Category: Arab publishing
At Morocco’s Rabat International Book Fair: A New Vision for Arabic Children’s Literature. Lessons for western children’s authors and publishers
Western audiences: Think here celebrity children’s authors that have no clue about how children read and think, and their publishers who rely on parents to buy into the celebrity brand-name and then wonder why the joy off reading is in freefall.
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UAE – Kanz Al Jeel Award 2025: Submissions Now Open
The Kanz Al Jeel Award is part of the broader efforts by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre to promote Arabic literature and culture.
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Call for Submissions – Ibn Khaldoun-Senghor Translation Prize 2025. Sadly, Self-Publishers Need Not Apply
It’s disappointing to see the dismissal of self-published efforts as being unworthy of consideration. If the recent history of the English-language publishing industry is anything to go by, many celebrated bestselling titles and bestselling authors started out on the self-publishing circuit.
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Egypt’s Cairo International Book Fair Sets New Footfall Record: 5.5 million.
But here just a reminder: the biggest book fair in the world is in Africa.
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Egypt – Dubai International Program for Writing at the Cairo International Book Fair
it would be fascinating to know how the DIWP workshops handle the AI angle, which simultaneously gives lazier writers the chance to coast, and gives serious writers the opportunity to take their art to new levels.
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UAE – Launch of the Fifth Young Voices of Arabia Anthology at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature
The anthology features stories from 22 award-winning young authors from the 2024 Voices of Future Generations for the Middle East competition, which I’m dismayed to admit I’ve not previously covered here on TNPS,
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Egypt – Abu Dhabi at the Cairo International Book Fair
Increasingly at these book fairs, the line is being blurred between “public facing” and “professional”, and in increasing numbers the industry names and faces we are all used to seeing at the big western publishing events are lining up to be at these emerging market events, at the same time as regional players are upping their game.
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UAE – 1st Sharjah Literature Festival begins January 17
The festival programme features a diverse array of events themed around literature, children’s literature, history and heritage, essay literature, the Arabic language, science fiction and fantasy, autobiography, thought, and miscellaneous events.
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Morocco – Registration now open for Rabat International Book Fair 2025
The 30th edition of SIEL will take place April 17-27 at the OLM Souissi venue.
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Al Dhafra Book Festival 2024: Footfall up 15%, Publisher Participation Doubles, and Fun is the Name of the Game
The festival included a comprehensive programme for children, reinforcing a read for pleasure mindset that we in the west, and especially in the UK and US, seem to have lost sight of, as witness the disturbing fall in the number of kids that read for pleasure both sides of the Atlantic.
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TNPS Thought for Christmas: TV celebrity children’s authors will never match the magic of Rowling or Blyton
Fewer and fewer children are reading for pleasure, in large part because the education system has failed them, but also in no small part because a TV celebrity riding on a ghostwriter’s skills and a jovial TV persona will never match the magic of a JK Rowling or an Enid Blyton, that wrote for children, not for fame and fortune.
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Saudi Arabia – Jeddah Book Fair 2024 Has Just Concluded
Among the usual highlights is a one-off event celebrated the Year of the Camel (in fact the Year of the Camelids, so alpacas, lamas and vicunas too, but guessing there aren’t too many of those on the Peninsula).
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