Facts and Figures

The first Vilnius Book Fair was held in 2000 and this year, it will be organised for the eleventh time. In over the decade, the book fair held in the capital of Lithuania turned into the biggest book fair in the Baltic States, well known among other European book fairs. Currently, Vilnius Book Fair is one of the most popular exhibitions of the LITEXPO. Last year it received the biggest number of visitors, while by its area and number of exhibitors it was among the biggest three exhibitions of the LITEXPO. 

Organisers of Vilnius Book Fair: Lithuanian Exhibition Centre LITEXPO, Lithuanian Publishers’ Association, Public enterprise Lithuanian Books, International Culture Programmes Centre.

Supporter of the cultural programme – Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.

Patron of Vilnius Book Fair – President of the Republic of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė.  

Vilnius Book Fair will be held on 18 – 21 February 2010.

Official opening of the fair – 18^th of February, 10:00. LITEXPO conference hall 5.1. (pavilion 5, 2^nd floor).

     Fair days:

• 18^th of February, Thursday, 10:00 – 19:00 - LIBRARIES DAY
• 19^th of February, Friday, 10:00 – 21:00 - LONG FRIDAY
•  20^th of February, Saturday, 10:00 – 19:00 -EXTRAORDINARY MEETINGS DAY
• 21^st of February, Sunday, 10:00 – 17:00 - FAMILY DAY.

Tickets: Lt 10 and Lt 7 (for school pupils, students, elderly people). Ticket to all four days of the fair costs Lt 25.

Considering long queues of visitors at the booking offices, the organisers recommend booking tickets in advance. Tickets are available at Bilietai.lt box offices or onlinehttp://www.bilietai.lt.

Highlight of the Fair – identity issue.

Exhibitors: 200 companies from 7 countries, including 30 foreign exhibitors.

Fair events: 353 cultural events, including 58 for children and families, 12 art exhibitions. 8 events will take place in locations, in Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers Union, Vilnius Pedagogical University, Pasaka cinema theatre, wine bars In Vino and La Boheme, one event will take place in Kaunas.

Complete programme of events and information about art exhibitions are available in the fair publication. Information is available also on http://www.litexpo.lt.

Press conferences of the Fair: 11 February, 11:00, LITEXPO conference hall 5.5.

Total exhibition area with event zones – 9740 sq.m., exhibition area – 6519 sq.m.

This year, the Fair will take place in three exhibition halls of the LITEXPO: halls 3, 4 and 5.

Halls 3 and 5 will house expositions of the fair participants. 

4^th Hall is devoted for children and families. It will house a creative studio You Can Create a Book, and a stage.

Cultural events will be held in the conference halls 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.5 (Hall 5), Writers’ Corner (Hall 5), Children Stage and Creative Studio (Hall 4), Forum (Hall 3), Gourmets Meeting Corner (Hall 3, lobby).

Art expositions will be exhibited in the hall 3 and gallery, hall 4.

Useful contacts:

Project Manager of Vilnius Book Fair Milda Gembickienė, phone (8 5) 2686824,

bookfair@litexpo.lt

Director of Public institution Books from Lithuania Gintautė Žemaitytė (thorough information about events), phone (8 5) 2618741, mobile phone 8-676-41066,gintaute@booksformlithuania.lt.  

President of the Lithuanian Publishers Association, member of the culture programme of the fair, Director of Tyto alba publishing house Lolita Varanavičienė, phone 8-616-17213, Lolita@tytoalba.lt. 

Executive Director of Lithuanian Publishers Association Aida Dobkevičiūtė- Džiovėnienė, phone (8 5) 2617740, mobile phone 8-670-76093, info@lla.lt. 

Director of the Publishing Centre of Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore, member of the working group for cultural programme of the book fair Gytis Vaškelis, phone 8-699-53253, (gytis@llti.lt).

Author and co-ordinator of the creative studio You Can Create a Book, supervisor of art exhibitions painter Sigutė Chlebinskaitė, phone 8-600-82899, sigute.chlebinskaite@gmail.com.

Statistics of Vilnius Book Fair

*Area including event zones is given

Highlight of Vilnius Book Fair

The highlight of this year's Vilnius Book Fair is the issue of identity and the Fair invites for a discussion on who we are, who we will be.

By raising this issue in its cultural programme, the Fair invites everyone to think about both social and personal identity. Books play an important role in shaping personalities and person's attitude to different situations, events, oneself. The issue of identity will be reflected in events of the fair, in particular, Discussion Club. Discussions on historical, cultural, ethnic identity or talks about child’s, teenager’s, adult’s identity should interest great majority of the fans of Vilnius Book Fair.  

Novelties of Vilnius Book Fair

The novelty of the Fair is its experimental project called Gourmets Meeting Corner. The project was determined by three reasons. First of all, culinary and famous people’s recipe books recently have become very popular all over the world, including Lithuania, second – most European books fair have Gourmets halls where not only cooking books are introduced but also food tasting events take place. And the third reason – the organisers wanted to distinguish the events of this theme from a big number of others.  

The Gourmets Meeting Corner will be housed in the lobby of the Hall 3. Events there will take place on Friday and Saturday. 7 meetings will be organised in total - Beata Nicholson (Laisvos valandos), Nomeda Marčėnaitė (Obuolys), Linas Samėnas will communicate with the visitors, prepare food and reveal their kitchen secrets, while Dainius Martinaitis will introrudce the latest recipe book by Jamie Oliver. Baltos lankos publishing house will organise presentation of culinary books called Time Travel of the Lithuanian Cuisine and food tasting event. Partner of the Gourmets Meeting Corner is IKI retail chain.

The other novelty of the Fair is related with bookbinding. Vilnius Bookbinders’ Guild will introduce the traditions of bookbinding craft for the first time. During four days of the Fair, a book will be bound, and visitors will be able to make their contributions to this work. 

The new project called Jam Session will be organised at the fair by JSS and JCI Sostinė. Every visitor of the Fair will be invited to contribute to book creation and to write one public book all together. The beginning for the stories to be developed at the project will be given by famous Lithuanian writings, while characters, plots and circumstances will be created by the visitors. This process will be broadcasted online. 

Another novelty – Autographs Sofa. Visitors of this year's fair will be able to get autographs of their favourite authors not only at the exhibition stands, but also in the gallery of the Hall 5, where a special Autographs Sofa will be standing.

In Hall 4, visitors will be able to familiarise themselves with the catalogues of the books of the best world's illustrators, which were exhibited at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. The reason for housing this exposition is participation of Lithuania with the guest’s rights in this fair in 2011.

Exhibitors of Vilnius Book Fair

200 companies from 7 countries will take part in the book fair: Lithuania (170 exhibitors), Poland (6), Estonia (1), Belarus (14), Japan (3), Italy (2), Georgia (4).   

Exhibitors include:

• 126 publishing houses - 103 from Lithuania, 23 from foreign countries;
• 19 book traders;
• 10 representatives of electronic book publishing and trade;
• publishing houses of 22 higher education schools;
• publishing houses of 12 scientific and cultural institutes;
• 7 associations, unions, funds;
• publishing houses of 3 museums;
• 5 libraries;
• 9 video and audio record publishers;
• 23 newspapers and magazines;
•  1 book fair – Warsaw Book Fair;
• 2 embassies – Japanese, Belarus.
• exhibition stands of 2 European institutions – representative office of the European Commission and information office of the European Parliament;
• 1 ministry – Belarus Ministry of Information.

This year, 3 national stands will be housed in the fair: Japanese, Belarus, Georgia. Visitors will also be invited to 11 collective exhibition stands, the biggest of which will belong to the Association of Lithuanian academic publishing houses uniting 19 publishing houses of Lithuanian higher schools and research institutes.  

This year, 30 new exhibitors will be waiting for the visitors: Georgian, Belarus publishing houses, publishing house of Italian Foggia city university which will have an exposition Written in Italy, also Lithuanian companies participating at the fair for the first time – Laisvos valandos publishing house, Nextmedia electronic book publishing company, representative office of Swedish company Bulls press in Lithuania, National museum Palace of Sovereigns of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Lithuanian office of Nordic Ministers Council, and many others.

Great majority of the exhibitors have been participating in the Fair since its beginning. Same as every year, all main publishing houses of Lithuania, issuing new books specially on this occasion, will take part in the fair. They include Alma littera, Šviesa, Tyto alba, Vaga, Baltos lankos, Versus Aureus, Publishing house of the Lithuanian Writers' Union, Scientific and encyclopaedia publishing centre, Minits, Apostrofa, Obuolys, etc.

Main book trade companies - Humanitas, Eureka, Rotas, Euroknyga, etc. - will also take part in the Fair introducing their novelties. Representative office of the European Commission in Lithuania and information office of the European Parliament will have their exhibition stands as usually. 

For the second year by now, the Lithuanian television and radio will have their own exhibition stand-studio, from which radio and television programmes will be broadcasted live. 

Novelties introduced by the publishing houses in the book fair are presented separately. All exhibitors can be found in the electronic catalogues of exhibitors www.litexpo.lt

Guests of Vilnius Book Fair

At the invitation of the publishing houses, a lot of famous foreign authors, most of whom are well known in Lithuania as well, will come to the fair this year to meet the Lithuanian readers. Traditionally, the most famous writers and poets of our country will be the guests of the fair. British Council and Tyto alba publishing house invited a famous British historian, author of the book Young Stalin Simon Seban Montefiore. At the invitation of Tyto alba, the author of the novel Sophia's World Jostein Gaarder will visit the fair. Alma littera publishing house invited Melvin Burgess, the author of the novels for young people The Junk, Lady: My Life as a Bitch, Doing It, and others, Baltos lankos publishing house – Karin Alvtegen, the author of The Shame, The Betrayal, The Guilt, and other novels, Versus Aureus publishing house – Joanne Harris, the author of the novels The Chocolate, Five Quarters of the Orange, The Lollipop Shoes, Vaga publishing house – Peep Vain, the author of the book The Most Important Questions, Polish Institute – famous contemporary Polish writer, author of the novel Lala - Jacek Dehnel, publishing house Briedis – Mark Solonin, one of the most famous contemporary Russian historians, author of the book June 22: Anatomy of a Catastrophe; International Culture Programmes Centre and British Council – famous representative of creative industries from the United Kingdom, author of the first creative business manual in Lithuania – David Parrish. At the invitation of Baltos lankos publishing house, famous American photo artist Alphonso Lingys will visit the fair, and his photo exhibition The Touches will be displayed at the fair.

Traditionally, the fair will boast a number of meetings with Lithuanian authors. The visitors will have a chance to meet S. Parulskis, G. Radvilavičiūtė, F. Taunytė, L.S. Černiauskaitė, A. Marčėnas, Antanas A. Jonynas, R. Rastauskas, A. Šliogeris, G. Grajauskas, M. Martinaitis, etc. In total, 95 Lithuanian authors will be present at the

fair.  

More information is available in the book fair publication.

Awards

Same as every year, various awards and prizes will be granted at the book fair. Laureates of the book art competition Vilnius 2009 organised by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Lithuanian Painters’ Union, Vilnius Art Academy will be traditionally awarded during the book fair, while the visitors will have an opportunity to see the exposition of the awarded books. Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute will award 12 best books of 2009, Lithuanian Association of Literary Translators will award the Companion Prize, J. Ivanauskaitė’s award For Free, Open and Daring Creative Expression will be granted again.

Dates and venues of awards are indicated in the book fair publication.

LITEXPO press centre

Phone (8 5) 2686821

E-mail: r.keliuotyte@litexpo.lt