"Skopje Fellowship" programme

Foreing publishers, festival directors and programme managers, literary agents and scouts – visiting Macedonia

“Skopje Fellowship” programme is dedicated to foreign publishers, festival directors and programme managers, literary agents and scouts. Macedonia is among the first countries in the region to establish a programme dedicated to such a profile of guests, and continues with the same intensity.

The objective of the Fellowship Programme is to familiarize the stakeholders of the prominent festivals and the world of publishers with the Macedonian literary scene, which, we hope, would result in new translations, visits of Macedonian writers abroad, promotion of the Macedonian and Balkan literature, networking of writers and cultural workers in the area of publishing and literature with their European and worldwide colleagues, increasing the interest for the Macedonian literature abroad…

Participants

Ursula Bergenthal – btb Random House (Germany)

Ursula Bergenthal studied German, English and Comparative Literature at the Universities of Munich and London, and completed her Ph.D. on “Harry Potter as an example of literary mass communication in modern media society” in Göttingen, Germany, where she also had a lectureship for a seminar on Literature and Marketing. Having worked part-time for several publishing houses (Gräfe und Unzer, Edito Service/ Atlas in Geneva, Heyne) she then was an editor at the Heyne publishing house. In 2008 she joined btb, where she now is the editor-in-chief. btb was established in 1996. It is part of Random House and publishes German and a wide range of international fiction (literary and upmarket commercial), as well as non-fiction. Authors include names such as Irvin D. Yalom, Kathryn Stockett, Maria Semple, Hakan Nesser, Hakan Günday, Zelda la Grange; in paperback Haruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie, Sofi Oksanen, Nataša Dragnić, Juli Zeh, Edo Popović, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Cunningham, Saša Stanišic, Karl Ove Knausgård, Julian Barnes.

Silvia Brunelli – Nabu Literary Agency (Italy)

Silvia Brunelli spent her youth in Germany, Poland and the US, and in her spare time she has travelled the world from Alaska
to Tierra del Fuego and from New Zealand to Greenland. Returning to her native Tuscany in 1987 Silvia Brunelli, after a long career in teaching at university level, she founded Nabu International Literary Agency which represents many international authors for worldwide rights as well as international publishers and agents into the Italian marketplace. Over the years Nabu International Literary Agency has negotiated rights and stipulated contracts for three Nobel Laureates ( Naguib Mahfouz Nobel 1988, Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel 1992, Dario Fo Nobel 1997) as well as for internationally renown authors WGSebald, Leonard Cohen, Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Jacques Delors……Since the Nineties she has moved her interest also towards film and has been involved in numerous film projects with late actor and producer Klaus Kinski, and movies starring actors as Peter Falck and Amber Tamblyn. Now a major TV project, a European coproduction,
is underway. Now, approaching the age of retirement she definitely wants to continue working: agenting and publishing
is a life not a job!

Nermin Mollaoglu – Kalem Literary Agency (Turkey)

Nermin Mollaoglu worked at YKY, one of the biggest and
most prestigious publishers in Turkey, 2002-2005. In 2005,
she established the Kalem Agency, which currently represents 120 contemporary Turkish authors and many foreign publishers and agencies in the Turkish market. Kalem organizes ITEF- Istanbul Tanpınar Literature Festival which is the only international literature festival in Turkey. The thirteen- person agency focuses primarily on fiction in all genres, but includes both children’s literature and nonfiction as well among its titles. Nermin Mollaoglu, who earned her master’s degree from Connecticut University, is currently writing a thesis on the loopholes in rights deals for authors and translators at İstanbul, Bilgi University.

Mehmet Dermitash – International Literature Festival Tanpinar (Turkey)

Mehmet Demirtas is the general director of ITEF-Istanbul Tanpinar Literature Festival. His main education consists of music composition for which he acquired his degree in music theory. The composer's musical activities are ongoing although with intervals. After his graduation in France, Demirtas returned to Turkey for a masters degree in Art Management and worked as the events coordinator in Yapı Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing where he organised events in activities in various branches of art for two years. In 2006, Demirtas set up Kalem Literary Agency and in 2009 started organising ITEF. In 2011 after establishing Kalem Culture Association together with the festival team, he is currently managing various EU projects as well as other international partnerships along with ITEF.