Anyone who’s met me knows that I can, on occasion, speak a bit fast. Almost incomprehensibly fast. Especially if English isn’t your first language . . . This “talent” kind of came in handy at the 21st Century Publishing Symposium at the Reykjavik International Literary Festival last week. The symposium was extremely interesting, with presentations by Kristjan B. Jonasson on the Future of Icelandic Publishing (I did a video interview with him that will run at Publishing Perspectives later this week), Heiko Strunk on Lyrikline.org, Helga Frese-Resch on finding and publishing literature in translation, and Alexander Schwarz on e-books.
I somehow managed to fit the bulk of my speech (which is probably 45 minutes long spoken at a normal, understandable clip) into about 20 minutes . . . So, for the benefit of anyone who attended the symposium and couldn’t understand a word I said, or anyone in general interested in the future of e-books and literature in translation, click here to download a pdf version of the entire presentation.
In terms of the Festival—I am writing a longer piece about it for Publishing Perspectives, and will post another update later today about some of the interesting authors I met in Iceland. And hopefully I’ll even have a few samples to run over the next few weeks . . .
In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a bone in the prison cells in the basement of the President of Iceland’s house. (I’m just going to let that statement stand as is for the time being.)
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