The Kyiv-based Book Arsenal Festival was declared the best literary festival at the London Book Fair International Excellence Awards on March 12.
The organizers have yet to publish the full list of the winners, but announced the winners in each nomination on Twitter as the ceremony was held.
“The 2019 Literary Festival Award goes to Book Arsenal Literary Festival from Ukraine,” a London Book Fair post on Twitter on March 12 reads.
The next Book Arsenal will take place in Kyiv on May 22-26 at the Mystetskyi Arsenal art exhibition center. This year’s fair has a working title of “Neighborhood,” and will focus on the problems of people co-existing in society.
The Book Arsenal competed for the prize with two other shortlisted nominees in the category – festivals from the Netherlands and Indonesia.
According to the press service of Mystetskyi Arsenal, the exhibition center whose team arranges the book festival, their director Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta was present at the ceremony in London’s Olympia Exhibition Center to receive the award.
“I felt very proud of the team and the project, and even the country,” Ostrovska-Liuta told the Kyiv Post. “As a society, we have to get used to this feeling that Ukrainians are able to imagine and organize really outstanding projects,” she added.
Apart from that, the London Book Fair International Excellence Awards named Booklava Audio company from the United Arab Emirates as the audiobook publisher of the year. The Espoo City Library in Finland named the best library, and the Fang Suo Commune store in China was named the bookstore of the year.
The International Excellence Awards is an honor founded by the London Book Fair and the UK Publishers Association aimed at celebrating achievements and innovations in publishing outside of the UK.
The largest annual literary and art fair in Ukraine, Book Arsenal, was founded in 2011 in order to bring together publishers from all over the country and the fans of literature. Apart from the fair, the festival holds readings, discussions, and performances during the festival.
