Meet me at the lighthouse

10 november 2023 | Nieuws

In order to bring literature in minority and minor languages in Europe more to the attention of national and international markets and to build a sustainable international network, Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature and Boeken fan Fryslân want to develop strategies together with six other European partners. They do this in the international LIT-UP project. I joined the project on it’s first meeting, which was held in Valencia in the end of October 2022.

At the end of 2023 I joined the meeting at literary festival Meet Me at the Lighthouse on the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog with writers and publishers participating in the European project LIT-UP. On Friday morning Mathijs Sanders, professor Modern Dutch Literature at the University of Groningen, led two inspiration sessions about the publishing and promoting of books in minority languages. Participating in these sessions were: Mireille Berman from the Nederlands Letterenfonds, poet and writer Tsead Bruinja, Frisian children’s book ambassador Tialda Hoogeveen, writer Anita Terpstra, poet and writer Nyk de Vries and Ernst Bruinsma from Boeken fan Fryslân.

Friday afternoon Mathijs Sanders presented the program Kleine Talen (‘Small Languages’), a literary program about the power of tradition. International writers Ixiar Rozas Elizalde (Basque Country), Pia Prezelj (Ljubljana) and Paco Inclán (Valencia) held a conversation with each other and recited, as did Tsead Bruinja. Linguistic researcher Dyami Millarson spoke about the importance of the preservation of languages that are in danger of disappearing.

LIT-UP focuses on publishers, writers, and book promotion organizations. It encourages collaboration, knowledge exchange, and professionalization. The other partners in the project are organizations from Catalonia, the Basque Country, Italy, Serbia, and Slovenia. In the project, Boeken fan Fryslân and Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature work together with six European partners to raise awareness of literature in minority languages in Europe. LIT-UP, which runs until early 2025, falls under the Creative Europe Program and is therefore supported by the European Union.