The Berlin International Literature Festival (German: internationales literaturfestival berlin) or ilb is an annual event based in Berlin. Every September, the festival presents contemporary poetry, prose, nonfiction, graphic novels and international children's and young adult literature. Renowned authors present themselves next to new talents within the wide-ranging and political programme. The festival is an event of the "Internationale Peter-Weiss-Stiftung". The founder and festival director is Ulrich Schreiber.
The 20th ilb was set to take place September 9 through 19, 2020.
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The founder and director of the festival until 2023 was Ulrich Schreiber. The festival is organized by the Peter-Weiss-Stiftung für Kunst und Politik e. V. The festival takes place at various locations in Berlin. Since 2005, the main venue has been the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. The festival is primarily supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund). Other sponsors include the Federal Foreign Office, the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, the Foundation Jan Michalski, as well as embassies, cultural institutes, and publishers.[1]
Programme
The festival's programme is divided into subsections: Literatures of the World, Reflections, Specials, International Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Speak, Memory. The Specials section is subdivided into New German Voices, Slam Revue, and Scritture Giovani, an international competition for young authors.
Every year, a Graphic Novel Day is featured during the festival. Since 2002, internationally-renowned guest authors of the ilb have voluntarily visited Berlin prisons during the festival to read from their books and discuss them with inmates. Since 2005, there have been annual collaborations with Science Year, an initiative by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Since 2019, the ilb has cooperated with the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" at FU Berlin. At all events of the ilb texts are presented by the authors in their mother tongue, followed by a German translation of the readings, which are performed by actors. A discussion between the presenter, author and audience follows each reading.
In November 2015, the Berlin International Literature Festival published an appeal to support Ashraf Fayadh, a Saudi Arabian poet imprisoned and lashed for apostasy, with a Worldwide Reading on January 14, 2016.[2]
Das außergewöhnliche Buch (translation: The Extraordinary Book) is an international children's and youth literature prize.[3][4][5][6] Since 2012, it has been awarded every year in September by the Children's and Youth Literature section of the festival.[7][8][9] The award honors remarkable books for children, teenagers and young adults.[10]
The festival's main sponsor is Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin. Additional sponsors are the Federal Foreign Office, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Foundation Jan Michalski and embassies, cultural institutes and publishing houses.
Annual publications
Catalogue: The annually-published festival catalogue contains photos, biographies and selected bibliographies of all participating writers.
The Berlin Anthology: All authors who participated in the program section 'Literatures of the World' come together and select 99 poems, that will be published in their original language and a German translation.
Scritture Giovani: Each year, the ilb publishes five short stories which have been exclusively written for the ilb Scritture Giovani contest according to a specific theme in the languages of the five participating countries (UK, Italy, Norway, Germany and a guest country).