Status Active Country Germany | Frequency Annually Years active 16 | |
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Genre Section of the Berlin International Literature Festival (ilb) Venue Berliner Festspiele and other venues in Berlin | ||
International Children´s and Young Adult Literature is a programme section of the Berlin International Literature Festival (ilb), which was founded by Ulrich Schreiber. The festival is organized by the Peter Weiss Foundation for Art and Politics and has taken place annually since 2001 for 11 days from the beginning to the middle of September.
Contents
Acitivities
The centre of the events for this section is the Berliner Festspiele theatre. Furthermore, some events take place at Berlin universities, theatres, museums, cultural centres, libraries and schools. The program consists mostly of premiere readings and workshops. As well as this, different specials take place, including workshop discussions, exhibitions, a poetry slam (since 2010), a retrospective (since 2011), the announcement of the award The Extraordinary Book (since 2012), an official section opening with a speech (since 2014) and different master classes (since 2015). In 2015, over 10,000 people visited the events of the section. The press named the section program an »essential pillar of the festival« (Sieglinde Geisel, NZZ, September 18, 2006) und »gorgeous« (Andreas Kilb, FAZ, September 11, 2015). According to the organizers, it is the aim of the section to undertake a »positioning of contemporary international Children´s and Young Adult literature« (2012) and to enable a »public presentation of content-wise and aesthetically extraordinary international contemporary literature for young readers« (2016). The section is member of the German IBBY. In different projects, the section cooperated in the last years amongst others with Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Humboldt University of Berlin, Free University of Berlin and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Since 2011, Christoph Rieger is head of the section.
Guests
From 2001 to 2016, 350 guests participated in events. Some of the notable guests were David Almond, Ishmael Beah, Azouz Begag, John Boyne, Émile Bravo, Kevin Brooks, Kitty Crowther, Kate DiCamillo, Julia Donaldson, Roddy Doyle, Wolf Erlbruch, Cornelia Funke, Jostein Gaarder, John Green, David Grossman, Peter Härtling, Franz Hohler, Stian Hole, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Navid Kermani, Judith Kerr, Jon Klassen, Guus Kuijer, Joke van Leeuwen, Sergei, Paul MaarGeert Mak, Scott McCloud, Patrick Ness, Uri Orlev, Maria Parr, Peter Pohl, David Van Reybrouck, Meg Rosoff, Boualem Sansal, Riad Sattouf, Axel Scheffler, Peter Sís, Shaun Tan, Janne Teller and Jenny Valentine.