The London Book Fair 2024 was once again held at Olympia between April 12th and April 14th and Anna Soler-Pont, Carla Briner, Carolina Martínez, and Clara Rosell attended on behalf of the Pontas Agency. The fair was “cheerfully noisy”, as Publishing Perspectives put it, confirming enthusiasm from publishing professionals all over the world in the very busy International Rights Center, which held over 500 tables for one-on-one meetings.
Since the team travelled to London a day in advance, we made the most of it by going bookhunting in some of the city’s beautiful bookstores like Waterstones or Foyles. We were pleasantly surprised to see many Pontas books in stock and on display! In the photos below, Dolores Redondo's The Invisible Guardian at Foyles on Charing Cross and Jill Johnson's Devil's Breath at Waterstones a Piccadilly Circus.
It was also a week to catch up with some of our UK-based clients, who we met up with for lovely conversations over dinner and drinks. In the photos below, the Pontas team at dinner with UK-based Cameroonian author Musih Tedji Xaviere and British author Marcia Hutchinson, whom we were both meeting for the first time. Mushi Tedji Xaviere won the Pontas and JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize 2021 for her debut novel These Letters End in Tears, which was published in the US with Catapult on March 12th 2024 and will be published in the UK with Jacaranda on March 28th 2024. Translation rights have been sold into Danish, Dutch, and Italian. Marcia Hutchinson is the author of Mercy, her debut as a solo writer.
While bookhunting at Foyles, we met with Swedish author Marie Bennett, who has lived in London for many years. In the photo below (left), she is with Carla Briner, Anna Soler-Pont, and Clara Rosell. Marie Bennett’s debut novel, Hotel Angleterre, was originally published in Swedish in 2015 and she is currently working on her second novel, writing in English instead. The team also met with Jill Johnson, the author of Devil’s Breath, which was published by Black & White/Bonnier in the UK on July 6th 2023 and is forthcoming in the US in Summer 2024 with Sourcebooks (under the title The Woman in the Garden). Translation rights have been sold into French, Russian, Polish, and Czech, and audiovisual rights have been sold to Adil Ray at Cornered Tiger, to produce a TV series. Jill Johnson’s second book in the Eustacia Rose series, Hell’s Bells, will be published in Summer 2024.
We were also able to meet Gretel Cuevas, a UK-based Mexican author who is working on her debut, and Verónica Llaca, a fellow Mexican author who was visiting London that week, at the fair itself. Verónica Llaca's novel Blood Ties, originally published in Spanish with Planeta México in 2021, will be published in the UK with Mountain Leopard Press/Headline on March 28th. In the photo below (left), Verónica Llaca with Elena Torres, her English-language editor, and Anna Soler-Pont from the Pontas team. On the right, Gretel Cuevas with Verónica Llaca.
See you next year!