Anna Ascolies and Marc de Gouvenain attended the 30th edition of the Paris Book Fair (26-31 March 2010), representing Pontas as, for the first time, a rights center was opened. The Salon du Livre is the world’s largest French-language book-related event, a six-day fair that attracts about 200,000 people each year, 10% of them professionals in the literary field. The number of foreign visitors to the fair has grown rapidly in recent years. Each year, a country is invited as guest of honor and if 2010 was celebrating Turkey and the 30th anniversary of the fair, the buzz was already around 2011 fair, with the Nordic countries invited to be guests of honour. This will be the first time that the five Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland) will be presented together as a theme region at an international book fair. The Paris Book Fair will offer a unique opportunity to introduce Nordic literature in all its breadth, the Sami regions, the Faroe Islands and Greenland included, to a French and international audience where for many years a great number of Scandinavian books (fiction, non-fiction, children literature) have already been published.
Pontas represents worldwide or in a limited number of counries a long list of Scandinavian writers, as for instance Jonas Jonasson, Christine Falkenland, Anja Snellman, Inger Wolf, Åsa Schwartz…
Marc de Gouvenain, translator into French of many of the great names of Swedish literature since 1970, publisher for a long while of many famous titles from Scandinavia, had in Paris the opportunity to meet representatives of the Nordic countries’ cultural institutions and discuss the important event of Paris Book Fair 2011.
Friendly and efficient discussions around Pontas rights list took place with most of the French publishing houses, proof that the book market is still going strong in France and interested in future publications of foreign literature, be it Arabic, Catalan, Spanish, Swedish… Some writers living in Paris represented by Pontas –as Tânia Ganho (left, in the picture with Anna Ascolies) or Marie Dardenne (right) - came by to visit the book fair and sat with Anna and Marc to share some friendly moments.
Jean Mattern (head of foreign literature at Éditions Gallimard) and Marc Parent (head of foreign literature at Buchet-Chastel), with Anna Ascolies.
Hege Roel-Rousson (in charge of the Scandinavian series at Actes Sud) and Eva Bredin-Wachter(editor of Scandinavian literature at JC Lattès Éditions), with Marc de Gouvenain.
Marc de Gouvenain discussing with Helen Sigeland (head of The Swedish Arts Council –left) and Maria Ridelberg-Lemoine (vice director of Institut Suédois in Paris).