From 21 to 24 March, seven Dutch illustrators and authors of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books will visit Germany. Dutch literature will be presented in ten events at the Leipziger Buchmesse and the corresponding Leipzig Liest reading festival.

Tsead Bruinja has been appointed as the new Poet Laureate of the Netherlands for a period of two years. Bruinja is the seventh Poet Laureate of the Netherlands, appointed by a commission of experts and prominent writers. The next two years he will write poems on the occasion of national events and act as poetry ambassador.

From January until July 2019, Syrian poet Ghayath Almadhoun (Damascus, 1979) will stay at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Amsterdam as writer in residence. During his stay he will be working on his fifth book of poetry in Arabic, an extensive text of life, love in the wartime, memories that became home, and the exile as background of the new wave of literature.

The Stripschap Prize 2019, the annual Dutch oeuvre award for cartoonists, has been awarded to Amsterdam cartoonist and illustrator Typex. Ever since the appearance of his overwhelming biography of Andy Warhol, eyes have been constantly focused on the Amsterdam comic strip maker and illustrator. Andy: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol has been published in six languages and fourteen countries and was praised all over the world.

Marga Minco (b. 1920) has been awarded the P.C. Hooft Prize 2019, one of the most prestigious Dutch literary awards, for her prose. The jury praised her as the author of a modest and intensely powerful body of work. ‘Without psychologizing, without resorting to pathos or pretention, she enables us to understand and fully engage with an inconceivable reality.’

This autumn the Les Phares du Nord campaign is taking twenty-one Dutch and Flemish authors to five French cities. A great deal of attention is also being paid to Dutch-language children’s and young adult literature, a much sought-after export product. From 28 November to 3 December, the Netherlands and Flanders are the ‘focus country’ at the Salon du Livre et de la Presse Jeunesse in Montreuil, France’s biggest and most important children’s book fair.

Cees Nooteboom has been awarded the Horst Bienek Prize for his entire poetic oeuvre, the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste announced Tuesday afternoon. The Akademie praises 85-year-old Nooteboom as one of the most renowned European writers.

Pieter Waterdrinker has won the Tzum prize for the best sentence from a book published in 2017. Waterdrinker wins a trophy and 95 euros, as many euros as words in the sentence, for a sentence published in his novel Tsjaikovskistraat 40. The English translation rights were sold to Scribe this summer. The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street: a century of revolution in St Petersburg will be published in 2020 in England, Australia and New Zealand.

Flemish author Jeroen Olyslaegers will be living and working as a writer-in-residence in Amsterdam from 2 October to 30 November, upon invitation by the Dutch Foundation for Literature. During his residency in Amsterdam, Jeroen Olyslaegers will work on a new historical novel and give a series of public lectures and interviews.

This month a bilingual collection of Frisian literature in Frisian and English, almost 400 pages in length, will be published by UK-based Francis Boutle Publishers. It is the first anthology in the world to present a comprehensive range of Frisian prose and poetry past and present in translation. Swallows and Floating Horses will be launched in Boekhandel Van der Velde in Leeuwarden on Thursday 4 October.

The jury of the European Literature Prize 2018 has announced that the award goes to Norwegian author Johan Harstad and his translators Edith Koenders and Paula Stevens, for the novel Max, Mischa & het Tet-offensief (Podium). The prize will be presented to the author and his translators on the evening of Wednesday 31 October at the Crossing Border Festival in The Hague.

Joost Swarte was awarded de Prix spécial du jury at the BD comic festival in Sollies-Ville, France, for his New York Book. The book provides a complete overview of his illustrations for The New Yorker, over 450 sketches, illustrations, ‘spots’ and covers, together with hitherto unpublished sketches, with commentary by the artist himself.

Simone Atangana Bekono was awarded the Poetry Debut Prize Aan Zee for her collection How the First Sparks Became Visible, translated from Dutch by David Colmer (2017). The prize is intended to stimulate young talent in poetry. Atangana Bekono was praised for the anger that resounds in her poetry and her unique voice.

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s debut novel De avond is ongemak (The Discomfort of the Evening) was a huge success in the Netherlands, going straight into the bestseller lists, even before the booksellers’ panel of television’s De Wereld Draait Door made it its book of the month. More than 40,000 copies were sold within a few months in the Netherlands, and, internationally, rights were rapidly sold to Suhrkamp in Germany and Faber & Faber in Britain and America. In Italy the book will be published by Nutrimenti, and a Korean translation is in preparation for Gimm-Young Publishers.

From 4 to 7 July the literary festival Bookstan - No East, No West took place in Sarajevo for the third time, with as this year’s theme Borders and Boundaries. There was an important place for literature in Dutch at this year’s festival. Curator Geert Mak, with the support of Mireille Berman of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, invited Dutch and Flemish writers to discuss borders in culture, literature and politics.

The shortlist for the European Literature Prize 2018 has been presented in Spui25 in Amsterdam. Five titles have been selected by a professional jury led by Anna Enquist as the best Dutch translations of contemporary European novels published last year. A special feature of the prize is that it is awarded to both authors and translators.

Dutch author Cees Nooteboom has won the Premio Internazionale Elena Violani – Landi, the international literary prize from the poetry centre of the University of Bologna. The prize was awarded to Nooteboom at the opening ceremony of the Oven Poetry Festival in Bologna in Italy on Wednesday 6 June. The prize money awarded with the prize is € 6.000

The BookSpot Gouden Strop (Golden Noose) 2018 has been awarded to Willem Asman for his book Enter (Ambo | Anthos) by jury chairman Anniko van Santen. The Shadow Prize went to Eva Keuris for her debut Over het spoor. Willem Asman wrote Enter with a scholarship from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Thanks to the new sponsor BookSpot, the Gouden Strop is worth an amount of € 20,000 this year.

Flemish poet Miriam Van hee has won the Ultima 2017 Prize for literature for her poetic oeuvre. Her latest collection, ‘As If We Were Summoned Somewhere’ (Als werden wij ergens ontboden), was described by the Ultimas’ jury as “an undeniable crowning achievement in this author’s unique, somewhat hushed oeuvre”. The jury went on to say that it is “a collection that deserves recognition, attention, and many readers.” Van hee received this Flemish Culture Award - a bronze statue and a sum of 10.000 euro - on 27 February 2018.

The prestigious, triennial Theo Thijssen Prize for children’s and youth literature goes to Bibi Dumon Tak, the board of the P.C. Hooft Prize for Literature announced. She is the first author of literary non-fiction to be awarded this prize. She regularly received scholarships from the Dutch Foundation for Literature for writing her books. Her work has been translated into many languages, including Chinese, German, English, Japanese and Polish.

A special edition edited by David Colmer has been published in print by The Enchanting Verses Literary Review.

For the Dutch and Flemish presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2016, the Dutch Foundation for Literature participated in the making of a series of 25 video portraits of Dutch and Flemish writers. The portraits are now available on a dedicated website.

The Woutertje Pieterse Prize 2018, one of the most prestigious prizes for Dutch children’s and youth literature - worth 15.000 euro, has been awarded to Annet Schaap for her debut Lampje (‘Little Lamp’). The jury praised the beautiful use of language in the book and the sense of recognition it evokes.

All in 2017 awarded Translation Grants (and other grants) can be found in the annual report of the Dutch Foundation for Literature. An overview of translations of Dutch and Frisian literature worldwide, both published and in preparation, both subsidized by our Foundation and not, may be found in our Translations Database.

Dutch and Flemish literature are in the spotlight at this year’s Leipziger Buchmesse, the second largest book fair in Germany, and its simultaneous literary festival Leipzig Liest. From Thursday 15 until Sunday 18 March graphic novelists and illustrators are live at work in Atelier Parade, more than ten Dutch and Flemish authors will read from their work or be interviewed on stage, and last but not least, new digital literature is introduced to publishers and the general public.

Once every four years the Dutch Foundation for Literature asks an independent agency to find out what ‘users of the Foundation’, particularly publishers, other literary organisations, writers and translators, think of the policies, communication and service of the Dutch Foundation.

Eighteen Dutch and Flemish writers are nominated for the Libris Literature Prize 2018: one of the most prestigious literary awards in the Netherlands, modeled after the Man Booker Prize, and worth 50,000 euro. Last years laureate Alfred Birney sold more than 85.000 copies of his magnum epos ‘De tolk van Java’, an English translation is in preparation.

‘What I would most like to do is write lines that seem as if they have always existed,’ so wrote Menno Wigman (1966-2018) in a recent letter to the Volkskrant literary critic Arjan Peters. Wigman produced a body of work that can rightly be called classic, not just because of the style, but also because he is one of the few contemporary poets who wrote sentences that are known and can be quoted by many readers.

The BNG Bank Literature Prize, the annual Dutch prize for young writers − worth 15.000 euros, has been awarded to poet, novelist, and playwright Marjolijn van Heemstra for En we noemen hem… (And His Name Is..). German, English, French, Italian and Spanish translations of this novel are in preparation.

Poet Nachoem Wijnberg will receive the P.C. Hooft Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for literature in the Netherlands, on 24 May 2018. According to the jury, reading Wijnberg is “to enter a sharp way of thinking in a flawless and dangerous language.” The annual award, worth 60.000 euros, is alternately awarded for prose (fiction), essays (non-fiction) or poetry.

This year, the Taalunie Playwriting Prize – worth 10.000 euros – has gone to novelist and poet Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (1968) for his play De advocaat (‘The Lawyer’). The jury stated that “De advocaat balances magisterially on the thin line between tragedy and comedy, realistic drama and meta-consideration, slapstick and emotion.”

Roel Schuyt (b. 1948) has been awarded the Dutch Foundation for Literature’s Translation Prize 2017. Since the 1990s he has translated work by a wide variety of writers from Central Europe, including Danilo Kiš, Dubravka Ugrešić and Borislav Čičovački, as well as young authors such as Goce Smilevski and Olja Savičević. He also wrote translation history by being one of the first to translate the work of Nobel Prize candidate Ismail Kadare directly from the Albanian. The prize, which includes the sum of €10,000, was presented in Amsterdam on Friday 8 December, during the Literaire Vertaaldagen.

Dutch poet Alfred Schaffer has been awarded the Charlotte Köhler Prize for Mens Dier Ding (Man Animal Thing). This poetry collection met with instant acclaim: it was nominated for the VSB Poetry Prize 2015 and awarded the Awater Poetry Prize 2014, the Paul Snoekprijs 2016, and now the Charlotte Köhler Prize - worth 15.000 euro. A French translation is in preparation. Alfred Schaffer (1973) is currently based in South-Africa, where he works as a lecturer at Stellenbosch University.

The 2017 Golden Slate Pencil has been awarded to Koos Meinderts for his children’s book Naar het noorden (To the North). This prestigious prize for the writer of the best Dutch children’s book of the year was presented at the launch of Dutch Children’s Book Week. The Dutch Foundation for Literature featured this title in its spring brochure Children’s Books from Holland.

The Golden Paintbrush 2017, the most important Dutch prize for an illustrator of children’s and young adult literature, goes to Martijn van der Linden for Tangram Cat. The book’s author Maranke Rinck has already won a Silver Slate Pencil for her part in this remarkable collaboration.

The jury of the 2017 European Literature Prize has chosen to honour British author Max Porter and his Dutch translator Saskia van der Lingen for Verdriet is het ding met veren (De Bezige Bij), the Dutch translation of the novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. The author will receive a sum of €10,000 and the translator €5,000. Chair of the jury, poet and novelist Anna Enquist, will present the prize to Porter and Van der Lingen on Thursday, 2 November, at the opening night of the Crossing Border Festival in The Hague.

‘This Is What We Share. Flanders and the Netherlands, guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair’ is to have a sequel. Several dozen Dutch and Flemish authors will be making appearances in cities across Germany in the coming months, from the International Literature Festival Berlin via Leipzig and Munich to the Harbourfront Festival in Hamburg.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the first publication of Anne Frank’s diary. Her story was the inspiration for Amsterdam City of Refuge, which offers a safe haven to persecuted writers and which is hosted by the Dutch Foundation for Literature in the former house of the Frank-family, where Anne Frank started her diary before they went into hiding. Deutsche Welle’s Fred Muvunyi talks with poet Lety Elvir and the Foundation’s managing director Tiziano Perez about the City of Refuge-project.

Gips oder wie ich an einem einzigen Tag die Welt reparierte by Anna Woltz and her translator Andrea Kluitmann (published in Germany by Carlsen Verlag) has been awarded the 2017 Silberne Feder. The German association of women doctors selected Woltz’s book from a record number of over 100 submissions.

Two prizes in a row this week for Dutch non-fiction author Frank Westerman! His book Een woord, een woord received both the Brusseprijs for the best journalistic book of the year and the Bob den Uyl-prijs for the best travel story of the year.

Every two years IBBY publishes the Honourlist, a list of high-quality children’s and youth books published in IBBY’s more than seventy-five countries. The national sections of IBBY nominate one book for each category that excels in text, illustrations or translation.

At the beginning of June an exciting new international initiative dedicated to the training of emerging literary translation teachers was launched, the European School of Literary Translation. ESLT aims to support professional literary translation by creating a sustainable pan-European infrastructure for the education of literary translation teachers. ESLT will contribute to enhancing the quality of literary translations and, consequently, to the promotion of European cultural and literary diversity and the European ideal of a shared European culture.

Alfred Birney has won the prestigious Libris Literature Prize - worth 50.000 euro - for his novel De tolk van Java (The Interpreter of Java). It is the second award that Birney receives for his book, in which he tells the story of his father who fought against alternating enemies in the independence war in former Dutch-Indies.

With his fourth novel, Een honger (A Hunger), previously awarded with the Dutch BNG Bank Literatuurprijs, Jamal Ouariachi wins the European Union Prize for Literature. “Besides exploring the nature of love and examining the wisdom and folly of development aid”, the jury praised _A Hunger _ for delivering “a fierce polemic against rigid sexual mores and is above all an exhilarating tour de force.”

The Gouden Lijst, a Dutch prize for youth literature for ages 12 to 15, is awarded to Benny Lindelauf for Hoe Tortot zijn vissenhart verloor. Ludwig Volbeda provided the tale about war and friendship with beautiful illustrations. An English and German translation are to be expected at Pushkin Press and Jacoby & Stuart.

The International Literary Prize Mondello goes to Dutch author Cees Nooteboom. The award ceremony will take place during the Salone Internazionale del Libro in Turin (Turin Bookfair) on Sunday May 21st. On this occasion he will talk with Ernesto Ferrero, Italian writer and literary critic, for an open public meeting at Sala Azzurra.

From the 30th of May till 4th of June, Poetry International will bring approximately 20 of the most prominent contemporary poets worldwide to Rotterdam for the 48th Poetry International Festival. This means it’s time for a new edition of the translation project In Other Words.

All in 2016 awarded Translation Grants (and other grants) can be found in the annual report of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

Dutch children’s author Anna Woltz and translator Andrea Kluitmann have been awarded the Katholischen Kinder- und Jugendbuchpreis for Gips oder Wie ich an einem einzigen Tag die Welt reparierte (Plaster Cast or How I Fixed the World Within A Day). The prize of 5,000 euro goes to both author and translator. Anna Woltz previously also received the Gouden Griffel, a prestigious Dutch award for children’s literature, for this novel.

Great success for Madla de Bruin-Hüblová and her Czech translation Pole je tento svět of the Dutch novel The field by Dola de Jong. The novel is nominated for the Magnesia Litera Prize, together with work by Irish author Sara Baume, Tunesian writer Hédi Kaddou, and their translators. The classic The Field was rediscovered in 2015 by Amsterdam based publishing house Cossee, and will or has been translated into nine languages, including English, German, French and Swedish.

The BolognaRagazzi Digital Award for the most innovative mobile app or web product for children is awarded on an annual basis by Bologna Children’s Book Fair in partnership with Children’s Technology Review. Out of 152 entries from 32 countries, the jury has chosen the winners of the Bolognarazzi Digital Award. In addition to the winners, six digital works received a special mention and some works were selected for a short-list. Een verre reis a children’s story of Dutch writer Toon Tellegen (Querido Kinderboek) produced by Yip Yip was chosen for a special mention.

The Flanders-Netherlands Guest of Honour programme at the Frankfurt Book Fair was a resounding success. In 2016, under the motto This Is What We Share, Flanders and the Netherlands organised the Guest of Honour programme at the largest trade book fair in the world. The ambitious programme ensured that more than 450 Dutch-language books were translated. The number of literary translations into German tripled compared to previous years. A new generation of writers was also successfully introduced into Germany. These are some of the conclusions of an evaluation conducted by the Flemish Literature Fund and the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

The Young Academy and the Society of Arts of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences have joined forces to develop Mingler: a virtual meeting place that encourages interaction and synergies in scientific and artistic research. A goldmine for scientists and artists seeking to collaborate across institutional boundaries.

American writer Sherill Tippins will work as writer in residence at The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW) in Amsterdam from February until June 2017.

Ester Naomi Perquin has been appointed as the new Poet Laureate of the Netherlands for a period of two years. Perquin’s great experience of the literary world makes her perfectly suited to the role of poetry’s ambassador in the Netherlands. She has edited a literary magazine, hosted a national radio show, written columns, compiled a poetry calendar and served as the Poet Laureate of Rotterdam. Perquin does not, however, limit her activities to poetry and literature; two years ago, for instance, she wrote the memorandum of basic principles for Rotterdam’s cultural policy.

On February 1st Five Dials and guest editor Philip Huff will present it’s Dutch issue. The issue is devoted to introducing English-language readers to authors who haven’t yet become established in translation. It will serve as a showcase of the finest young authors writing in Dutch today.

On January 1, 2017 nine European organisations officially launched the PETRA-E Network for the Education and Training of Literary Translators. The partners will expand, implement and further develop the PETRA-E Framework, the result of the successful Erasmus+ funded PETRA-E project (2014-2016), and will provide a collaborative space for the discussion of related topics.

“It was still dark, in the early morning hours of the twenty-second of December 1946, on the second floor of the house at Schilderskade 66 in our town, when the hero of this story, Frits van Egters, awoke.” Almost seventy years after this fact of fiction, the Dutch postwar classic De avonden has awoken in the minds of English readers, and how! Thanks to the the superb translation by Sam Garrett and raving reviews Pushkin Press managed to sell 14,000 copies of The Evenings. A Winter’s Tale - so far. The U.S. edition will follow soon, in 2017.

January the 17th, Dutch and UK writers come together to perform in one of the most exciting venues in London, The Tabernacle. Join best-selling authors Herman Koch and David Nicholls along with a host of all-star writers from the Netherlands and a cabaret-style evening of High Impact entertainment: readings, chat, music, food and drink.

The ECI Literature Prize 2016, worth 50,000 euro and one of the most prestigious of Dutch literary prizes, has been awarded to Martin Michael Driessen for Rivieren (Rivers). He won not just the prize from the jury of professional critics but the new readers’ award as well, organized by quality newspapers NRC and De Standaard.

Dutch author Edward van de Vendel, Flemish illustrator Anton Van Hertbruggen and German translator Rolf Erdorf have won a German Children’s Literature Award in the picture book category for the German translation (Bohem Press) of The Dog that Nino Didn’t Have (De Eenhoorn, 2013).

On 18 October, the Dutch King Willem-Alexander and the Belgian King Filip and Queen Mathilde open, in the presence of the Flemish Prime Minister and the Dutch Minister of Culture, the guest-of-honour pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Flanders and the Netherlands will be presenting their culture and literature to a German and international public. This is the culmination of a great project that the Netherlands Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund have been working hard on for almost four years.

Both Edward van den Vendel and Erna Sassen have been nominated for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2016.

Never before has the Frankfurt Book Fair seen a guest-of-honour country manage to clock up so many translations in the run-up to the fair. The tally for translations into German of books from and about the Netherlands and Flanders, varying from travel guides and art books to literature, has exeeded the 450 mark.

Pieter Steinz passed away yesterday, at the age of fifty-two, in his home town, Haarlem. He was suffering from ALS, a progressive muscular disease with which he was diagnosed in 2013. He gradually laid aside his tasks as director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature but remained closely involved with the Foundation’s activities. He also published several successful books: Made in Europe (2014), Lezen met ALS (2015), and in 2015 the Book Week essay Waanzin in de wereldliteratuur. In that same year a completely revised edition appeared of Lezen Etcetera, first published twelve years earlier, with the title Steinz – Gids voor de wereldliteratuur. He wrote this ‘Dikke Steinz’ (‘The Thick Steinz’), as it became known, along with his daughter Jet Steinz.

The Frankfurter Buchmesse opens on the evening of Tuesday 18 October, when the official presentation of the Netherlands and Flanders as guest of honour begins with the motto, ‘This Is What We Share’. Not one, but two authors will be representing the guest of honour country. For the Netherlands, the renowned author, actor and columnist Arnon Grunberg will take to the stage, while Flanders will be presenting the youngest guest country speaker in the history of the trade fair, in the person of Charlotte van den Broeck.

Today former managing director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, Pieter Steinz received the very first copies of Der Sinn Des Lesens, the German translation of his book Lezen met ALS (Reading with ALS). It will be available in German bookstores mid July. Sooner than expected, as the title was announced for August. Thanks to translator Gerd Busse and to Reclam Verlag the production process was shortened.

More than ten Dutch-language graphic novelists have been invited to the 17th International Comic-Salon Erlangen, the most important international comic festival in Germany. Recent work by all the authors has been translated into German. Flemish and Dutch graphic novels will be featured in two exhibitions, a live drawing workshop, a special magazine, ‘Parade’ that will be printed on the spot on the Risograph and in loads of readings and encounters.

Friesian author Hanneke de Jong has won the Simke Kloosterman Prize 2016 with her youth novel Trettjin dagen om in spetterjend feest te organisearjen. The prize is awarded once every three years for the best Frisian youth or children’s book.

Dutch author Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer will be on book tour in March visiting Washington DC, New York, Houston and Dallas to present the English translation of his novel La Superba. The book was translated by Michele Hutchinson and published by Deep Vellum.

Appearances today, 10 March, by Saskia de Coster and Connie Palmen at the literary festival lit.Cologne mark the start of an extensive range of literary programmes presenting the Netherlands and Flanders as joint guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In total more than 120 Flemish and Dutch authors will make appearances in seven German cities. The kick-off in Cologne coincides with the opening of Book Week in the Netherlands.

Ted van Lieshout and Marit Törnqvist are on the shortlist of the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2016, the highest international recognition for authors and illustrators of children’s books. This is the second nomination for Van Lieshout, who was also nominated in 2014. He now shares his nomination with authors Cao Wenxuan (China), Louis Jensen (Denmark), Mirjam Pressler (Germany) and Lois Lowry (USA).

This year the Prix des Phares du Nord has been awarded to Isabelle Rosselin for Villa avec piscine, the French translation of Herman Koch’s novel Zomerhuis met zwembad (Summer House with Swimming Pool). The jury was composed of Danielle Bourgois, translator Alain Van Crugten and literary critic Margot Dijkgraaf.

All in 2015 awarded Translation Grants (and other grants) can be found in the annual report of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

Iperborea recently published an Italian translation of Tumbas by Cees Nooteboom. The book, in which Nooteboom travels to see the graves of poets and thinkers all over the world, has been very well received in the Italian newspapers.

The ECI Literature Award 2015 has been awarded to Jeroen Brouwers for The Wood. With this award the jury honours the ‘command of the language’ on display in Brouwers’ stylistic tour de force about a young teacher’s struggle to escape a brutal boarding school regime. Weissbooks will publish a German translation (by Christiane Kuby) of the novel in the autumn of 2016.

In the run-up to the Frankfurt Book Fair 2016, where the Netherlands and Flanders will be guest of honour, an impressive list of German translations is in preparation.

Although still a year away, the Frankfurt Book Fair 2016 is already bearing fruit for the Netherlands and Flanders, which will be joint guest of honour. German publishers are planning more translations of Dutch literature next year than ever before, with some 250 titles in all genres currently in preparation.

The 2015 Libris History Prize has been awarded to Alexander Münninghoff for Heir and Successor, his account of the stirring history of his family. According to the jury the award is bestowed upon a book that ‘is well written, moving and it takes you off guard’.

The Golden Slate Pencil (Gouden Griffel) has been awarded to Bette Westera at the opening ceremony of the Dutch Children’s Book Week. It is the first time since 20 years that this prestigious prize for children’s literature goes to a poetry book. For Dead Simple (Doodgewoon, Gottmer Publishers), written by Westera and illustrated by Sylvia Weve, it is is the third award this year. It also received the Woutertje Pieterse Prize 2015, and a ‘Zilveren Griffel’ and ‘Vlag & Wimpel’.

The jury of the Vondel Translation Prize 2015 has awarded the prize jointly to Laura Watkinson for The Letter for the King, her translation into English of De brief voor de koning by Tonke Dragt, and to Donald Gardner for In Those Days, his translation into English of a selection of poetry by Remco Campert. The jury was made up of British critic Paul Binding and translators David Colmer (Australia) and David McKay (US).

Adriaan van Dis (1946) has been awarded the Constantijn Huygens-prijs 2015, an important Dutch oeuvre award. His wide-ranging oeuvre consists of poems, novels, stories, plays, and essays.

The European Literature Prize 2015 goes to Een handvol sneeuw (The End of Days) by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated into Dutch by Elly Schippers. This was announced today in the radio programme Opium on 4 by Margot Dijkgraaf, chairwoman of the jury. The prize awards both author and translator of the winning novel, the author receives €10.00 and the translator €5.000.

The German newsmagazine Die Zeit and Radio Bremen have awarded Anna Woltz the July LUCHS-award for her young-adult novel Meine wunderbar seltsame Woche mit Tess, translated in German by Andrea Kluitmann and published by Carlsen Verlag.

The film version of Belcampo’s The Surprise is in the running for the Parel (Pearl) Audience Award for the best literary adaptation. Of the six films nominated, it is the only one based on the work of a Dutch-language author.

In the year in which the Netherlands and Flanders will jointly present themselves as guests of honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the Dutch Boekenweek (Bookweek) aims at Germany, under the motto Was Ich nog zu sagen hätte. This was reported today by CPNB in a press release.

This year, the Poesiefestival Berlin has invited six Dutch-speaking poets from the Netherlands and Flanders to participate in the VERSschmuggel (“verse smuggle”) translation workshop.

Tommy Wieringa’s Questi sono nomi (These are the names, translated by Claudia Di Palermo and Claudia Cozzi for Iperborea) and Stefan Hertmans’s Guerra e trementina (Oorlog en terpentijn, translated by Laura Pignatti, for Marsilio) feature both on the Premio Strega Europeo shortlist.

For his novel I will return Adriaan van Dis has been awarded the Libris Literature Reward, the most prestigious annual award for Dutch novels. I will return explores the relationship between a writer and his 98-year-old mother. As the always distant mother approaches the end of her life she is persuaded to open up about the hardships which plagued her life. She makes a deal with her son, she tells him her life-story and he will provide her with a peaceful death through pills.

The Wouterje Pieterse Prize 2015, one of the most prestigious prizes for Dutch children’s and youth literature, has been awarded to writer Bette Westera and illustrator Sylvia Weve for Doodgewoon (‘Dead Simple’). The jury praised their unique approach to the central theme of this illustrated poetry collection: death in all its aspects.

Each year the London Book Fair hands out awards in a number of categories as part of its International Excellence Awards program. We’re very proud to announce that the Dutch Foundation for Literature has made the shortlist for this year’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award.

No less than four German translations of Dutch-language children’s books are nominated for the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

In the February 20th edition of TLS, writer Claire Lowdon praises Tommy Wieringa’s These Are the Names, the third of his novels to be translated into English. She compares the novel favourably to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road:

In The Independent blogger Ann Morgan recommends Cees Nooteboom’s Rituals as one of the ten foreign books we should all read.

Mikis and the Donkey by Dutch author Bibi Dumon Tak and illustrator Philip Hopman and translated by Laura Watkinson is the winner of the 2015 Mitchelder L. Batcheler Award. Dumon Tak, Hopman and Watkinson have the pleasure of receiving this prize - given to the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States - for the second time. Soldier Bear, published in Dutch as Soldaat Wojtek, won the 2012 Batchelder Award.

From January the 19th until the 23rd 10 German fiction publishers visited the Netherlands and Flanders for an extensive tour through the literature landscape of the Low Countries. During this tour the German publishers presented their publishing houses.

Last Thursday, author Maartje Wortel won the BNG Bank Literature prize. She receives the oeuvre award for young talent for her novel IJstijd.

Journalist and author Geert Mak is the recipient of the 2015 Gouden Ganzenveer (golden feather quill). The Academy honours Mak for his extraordinary engagement in both national and international history. The award will be presented to Mak on the 16th of April in Amsterdam.

Maartje Wortel will stay as a writer in residence at the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht for a period of two months. The writer in residence programme is a joint initiative of the Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Van Eyck Academy.

On Friday 12 December 2015 Edgar de Bruin was awarded the Dutch Foundation for Literature’s Translation Prize for the translator as cultural ambassador. His oeuvre demonstrates his sharp eye for modern Czech literature; he has introduced writers including Petra Hůlová, Jáchym Topol, Patrik Ouředník and Markéta Pilatová to a Dutch readership.

The Belgian translation prize ‘Prix Scam de la Traduction littéraire’ has been awarded to Marie Hooghe for her translations from Dutch to French.

Die Jury des Else Otten Übersetzerpreises hat beschlossen, den Preis 2014 zwei Übersetzern zu verleihen: Bettina Bach für ihre Übersetzung von Hotel Linda von Arjan Visser, im Februar 2014 unter dem Titel Der blaue Vogel kehrt zurück erschienen bei Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag in München, und Rainer Kersten für seine Übersetzung von De laatkomer von Dimitri Verhulst, im April 2014 erschienen als Der Bibliothekar, der lieber dement war als zu Hause bei seiner Frau bei Luchterhand Verlag in München.

The P.C. Hooft Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for literature in the Netherlands is awarded to poet Anneke Brassinga (1948), whose work has been supported by by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and has been translated in more than ten languages including German and French. The annual award is alternately given for prose (fiction), essays (non-fiction) and poetry and will be presented to Brassinga on Thursday May 21th 2015 for her body of poetry.

On the 4th of December The Independent published an overview of the best debuts of 2014. Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda was one of the novels on Eimear McBride’s list: “If I had to choose one first novel, it would be the addictive bedlam of Bonita Avenue by Dutch novelist Peter Buwalda (Pushkin, £12.99).”

Joost de Wit has passed away at the age of seventy-five in his home village of Muntendam. De Wit (1938-2014) was director of the Foundation for the Promotion of the Translation of Dutch Literary Works, the forerunner of the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch literature (NLPVF).

This morning at the Frankfurt Book Fair Marente de Moor was announced the winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2014 for her second novel The Dutch Maiden (De Nederlandse maagd), published by Querido.

The two most important Dutch prizes for children’s and young adult literature, the Golden Slate Pencil and the Golden Paintbrush have gone to one and the same book, for the first time since 1985: The Mystery of Life – and the Stinky Socks of Jos Grootjes from Driel, published by Gottmer. Author Jan Paul Schutten and illustrator Floor Rieder introduce earth’s origins, the universe and the story of evolution in ways that are witty and factual, technical and anecdotal.

Poet Gerrit Kouwenaar died on 4 September 2014 in his hometown of Amsterdam. He was 91 years old. Kouwenaar was one of the most important Dutch poets and a member of the Vijftigers, a group of 1950s experimental Dutch poets, who changed Dutch poetry forever.

The Jenny Smelik-IBBY prize 2014 goes to author Hans Hagen and illustrator Philip Hopman for their youth novel Het hanengevecht (The Cockfight), published by Querido. This title was also selected for the 10 Children’s Books From Holland brochure (spring 2013) from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Previous work by Hans Hagen has been translated into fourteen languages, including German, English, French, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese and Papiamento.

The renowned Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk is the Grand Prix winner of the 2014 Helena Vaz da Silva European Award for Raising Public Awareness on Cultural Heritage. This Award acknowledges exceptional contributions to the communication on cultural heritage and European ideals. The Jury also gave a Special Award to the Portuguese Art Historian José-Augusto França and a Special Mention to Pieter Steinz.

Flemish author Bart Moeyaert has been appointed artistic director of the programme to be presented by Flanders and the Netherlands as guests of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2016.

The shortlist for the European Literature Prize 2014 has just been announced at a festive gathering in Amsterdam. The jury selected five titles from a longlist of twenty translated novels. The European Literature Prize is unusual in recognizing both the author and the translator of the winning book. The prize will be presented on Sunday 7 September, during Manuscripta, in Utrecht.

The prestigious Libris Literature Prize 2014 has been awarded to Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer for his novel La Superba (De Arbeiderspers). The jury described it as “an important novel with a powerful universal message which deserves many new readers outside our own language”.

Words without Borders dedicates a special issue of its webmagazine to New Dutch and Flemish Writing, under the title ‘Taboos’. This issue presents short prose exploring the intrusion of the forbidden, the illegal, the unspoken into people’s lives and homes. Editors Sanneke van Hassel (writer) and Victor Schiferli (Dutch Foundation for Literature) selected work from fourteen authors, most of whom grew up in the prosperous years that the Netherlands enjoyed from the mid-1970s until the 2008 financial crisis.

Der VvL-penning 2014 geht an die Übersetzerin Andrea Kluitmann und würdigt ihr großes Engagement für das Übersetzerfach. Andrea Kluitmann setzt sich schon seit vielen Jahren für die Literatur und ihre Übersetzung in den Niederlanden ein. Als Mitglied im Beratungsgremium des Nederlands Letterenfonds in Amsterdam sowie des Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen in Utrecht, als Mitbegründerin der Website Vertaalverhaal.nl, und nicht zuletzt als Mitorganisatorin der ‘Übersetzerglücktournee’ (Vertalersgeluktournee).

The English translations of Tirza by Arnon Grunberg (tr. Sam Garrett for Open Letter Books) and The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (orig. Het verboden rijk, tr. Paul Vincent for Pushkin) have reached the finals of the 2014 Best Translated Book Awards in Fiction.

As of 1 April 2014, the Dutch Foundation for Literature’s board of directors will become a supervisory board. On that same date, Tiziano Perez will take up the post of managing director.

On Monday 17 March, the Dutch and Flemish Ministers of Culture, Jet Bussemaker and Joke Schauvliege, signed an agreement with Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurter Buchmesse. That makes it official: the Netherlands and Flanders will jointly present themselves as guests of honour at the publishing industry’s most important international book fair in 2016. The Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund will assume responsibility for the practical organization of the guest-of-honour programme. They will receive a significant part of the necessary funding from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Flemish Ministry of Culture, Youth, Sport and Media.

On Monday February 10, the Prix des Phares du Nord 2013 is given to Alain van Crugten for his translation into French of Sprakeloos by Tom Lanoye (La Langue de ma mère), published at the Parisian La Différence. The jury praised as well his French translation of the theatre play Mamma Medea.

The Vondel Translation Prize 2013 has been awarded to David Colmer for The Misfortunates (Portobello Books), his translation of De helaasheid der dingen by Dimitri Verhulst. The award ceremony took place at Europe House in London on Wednesday 12 February 2014.

Mister Orange is the 2014 Batchelder Award winner. Originally published in Dutch in 2011, the book was written by Truus Matti, translated by Laura Watkinson, and published by Enchanted Lion Books. Another translation from Dutch by Watkinson, The War Within These Walls (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers), written by Aline Sax and illustrated by Caryl Strzelecki, was selected as one of three Honour Books. The Batchelder Award is given to the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States.

The longlist for the European Literature Prize 2014 has been announced: twenty novels translated into Dutch from no fewer than twelve different languages. A jury of Dutch and Flemish quality bookshops was asked to choose the best European novels in Dutch translation published in the past year. The prize is worth €10,000 to the author of the winning book and €5,000 to the translator.

Eighteen Dutch and Flemish novels have been selected for the longlist of the Libris Literature Prize 2014: the biggest Dutch literary award next to the AKO Literature Prize, modeled after the famous Booker Prize. The annual Libris prize for the best Dutch novel of the previous year consists of € 50.000.

Maria Barnas, F. van Dixhoorn, Micha Hamel, Miriam Van hee and Antoine de Kom have been nominated for the VSB Poetry Prize 2014, the annual prize for best Dutch work of poetry that will be awarded on January 29.

This year’s Translation Prize of the Dutch Foundation for Literature will be awarded to Martin de Haan, literary translator from French to Dutch. The Prize, in recognition of his entire body of work as a translator will be awarded on Friday 13 December in Amsterdam.

With the French translation of his novel Op zee (At Sea), Toine Heijmans has won the prestigious French literary prize ‘Prix Médicis étranger’. Heijmans is the first Dutch author ever to win the annual award, surpassing amongst others Alan Hollinghurst, Jaume Cabré and Javier Marías.

The Vondel Translation Prize 2013 has been awarded to David Colmer for The Misfortunates, his translation into English of De helaasheid der dingen by Dimitri Verhulst. The jury was made up of British critic Paul Binding (Times Literary Supplement) and translators Sam Garrett and Paul Vincent.

The English Schwob website is being launched today as part of an ambitious project to find and promote insiders’ tips about modern European literature. Schwob presents modern classics, cult books and must-reads from that have not yet been widely translated, at http://schwob-books.eu.

IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, has selected Ellen van Velzen’s debut novel Jonge vlieger (Young Kite Flyer), Fjouwer dappere mûskes (Four Brave Mice) by Frisian author Eppie Dam and Nul is een raar getal (Zero is a Peculiar Number) by illustrator Henriette Boerendans for the Honour List 2014. The Honour List offers a selection of quality children’s literature from more than seventy affiliated countries and will be presented at conferences and book fairs around the world.

From the end of August, the director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, Pieter Steinz, will delegate some of his tasks to his deputy Tiziano Perez.

The European Literature Prize 2013 goes to Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère, translated by Katelijne De Vuyst and Katrien Vandenberghe. Chairman of the jury Alexander Rinnooy Kan will present the prize to Carrère and his translators in Amsterdam on Saturday 31 August, during Manuscripta

The shortlist for the European Literature Prize 2013 has been announced during a festive evening at SPUI25 in Amsterdam. From a longlist of 21 translated titles, the jury has selected five from which the winner will be chosen. The prize will be awarded on 31 August, during the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam.

The first German James Krüss Prize for children’s and young adult literature will be awarded to the writer and illustrator Joke van Leeuwen. She will receive the award for her entire oeuvre, together with two German translators of her work, Hanni Ehlers and Mirjam Pressler.

Tommy Wieringa has won the prestigious Libris Literature Prize 2013 for his novel These Are the Names (De Bezige Bij). This book is highlighted in our Spring 2013-publication, 10 Books from Holland, and was partially written by Wieringa, on invitation of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, as a writer in residence at the NIAS in Wassenaar.

Oek de Jong has been awarded the Golden Owl Prize 2013, which is the most important literary prize in Flanders. The prize consists of 25,000 euros and a work of art by Philip Aguirre. A panel of experts named De Jong’s novel Pier and Ocean (Atlas Contact publishers) the best Dutch literary work of the past year.

Caesarion by Tommy Wieringa is one of the ten books contending for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2013. Thanks to his shortlisted novel, Wieringa finds himself in the company of Michel Houellebecq (The Map and the Territory) and Haruki Murakami (1Q84).

The European Union announced today that a subsidy of €200,000, the maximum, has been granted to the Schwob.nl project to enable it to expand into an international network, a European portal for the best unknown books of world literature.

Ester Naomi Perquin‘s third poetry collection titled Cell Inspections (Celinspecties) has been awarded the VSB Poetry Prize, Holland’s most prestigious prize for poetry, worth 25,000 euros. The other nominees were H.H. ter Balkt, Luuk Gruwez, Sybren Polet and Menno Wigman.

Gods Without Men, Limonov and Stone Upon Stone are among the titles on the longlist for the European Literature Prize 2013, that was just announced. Thirteen independent Dutch and Flemish bookshops have selected the twenty-one best European novels published in Dutch translation last year. The prize will be presented in early September, during Manuscripta 2013, the opening event of the Dutch book season.

At the last Frankfurt Book Fair, the Dutch Foundation for Literature presented a Dutch Classics brochure. One of the many titles in it was Oeroeg by Hella S. Haasse. Even though it was written in 1948, it is still considered one of the highlights of her literary career. This fall, Portobello Books published a new translation by Ina Rilke, The Black Lake, a reference to the black lake in which Oeroeg’s father drowns.

The day the 2012 AKO Literature Prize was presented, its first winner died. Bernlef was awarded the AKO Prize in 1987 for Public Secret. Best known as the author of Out of Mind (1984), which was published in twenty languages, he served on the board of the Literature Foundation from 1968 to 1970. He was also a poet whose twenty collections won him the P.C. Hooft Prize in 1994 and the translator of many novels and poems from Swedish and French.

After thorough deliberation the jury has unanimously awarded the Else Otten Übersetzerpreis 2012 to Christiane Kuby for her translation of Godenslaap by Erwin Mortier. The German translation Götterschlaf appeared in 2010 by publishers DuMont in Cologne.

Six authors have been nominated for the AKO Literatuurprijs 2012. From all the Dutch novels published over the last twelve months, the following titles have been selected: Grip (Grip) by Stephan Enter, Liefde heeft geen hersens (Love has no Brains) by Mensje van Keulen, Dinsdag (Tuesday) by Elvis Peeters, Post Mortem by Peter Terrin, Het boek Ont (Man & Post) by Anton Valens and De man zonder ziekte (The Man without Illness) by Arnon Grunberg.

Joke van Leeuwen writes poetry and prose, which she illustrates herself, for both adults and children. Her work includes dozens of titles, for which she has now been awarded the Constantijn Huygensprijs. ‘Whether she writes or draws, for adults or for children,’ the jury writes, ‘her very personal style makes her work always instantly recognisable as that of Joke van Leeuwen.’

Erik Menkveld has won the Academica Literatuurprijs 2012 for his novel Het grote zwijgen (The Great Silence). The jury described the novel as a wide-ranging and cinematic narrative: “Het grote zwijgen tells the story of a tragic friendship that is rooted in admiration and lofty ideals, but which founders on the banal and merciless reality of war, adultery and betrayal. Above all of that reigns the great, indifferent silence of the firmament.”

Following years of effort by translator Gerd Busse, the first volume of Het Bureau has recently been published in German by C.H. Beck. This event has not gone unnoticed. The first discussions of the book have already appeared in Germany, and it seems to have been well received not only by the media, but also by readers.

Writer Willem G. van Maanen passed away last Friday at the age of ninety-one, his publisher De Bezige Bij announced today. Van Maanen (1920-2012) was the author of a varied and highly respected body of work in which music, theatre, fine art and architecture played an important part. In 2004 he was awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his work as a whole.

Poet, writer and translator Francisco Carrasquer Launed, winner of last year’s Brockway Prize for poetry translators, passed away on 7 August in the Spanish town of Tárrega.

The Institut Néerlandais in Paris kindly requested us to bring to your attention the writers residence Villa Marguerite Yourcenar in the North of France. The residence offers accommodation to authors from all over Europe for a period of one or two months during which they can work on their manuscript. Applications for 2014 are now welcome and can be submitted by writers of all literary genres: novel, poetry, theatre, essay, comics, young adult and children’s literature. In order to apply one must have published at least one book with a European publishing house.