Topelius Prize to Simukka

The Topelius Prize, awarded by the youth writers’ association of Finland for the best Finnish YA book published in the previous year, has been given to Salla Simukka for her novels Jäljellä (Without a Trace) and Toisaalla (Elsewhere). The novels examine the world of the youth, the pressures of society, and finding the important things in life, be it in a dystopic world almost devoid of people or in the virtual world created for the young who are in danger of being left behind by the society.

If you would be interested in these books, reading materials in English can be requested from the literary agency.

Itäranta Takes the World (cont’d)

In addition to previously reported sales, the novel Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta has been sold also to Italy and Turkey. Great News!

Moominvalley Moves

The Moominvalley exhibition has opened in its new home in the Tampere Arts Museum. Fans of the exhibition were relieved to find out that the centrepiece of the exhibition, a 2-meter tall Moomin house survived the move intact. The museum is open daily (except on Mondays).

Happy New Year!

Merry 2013!

As it’s the first of the month, the monthly newsletter about sfnally interesting events in the Turku area is out.

Also, the pub meetings continue as usual. The first this year is on Thursday, in Teerenpeli at six. Hope to see you there!

Topelius Nominees

Suomen nuorisokirjailijat, the Finnish union of authors writing for children, youngsters and young adults, awards the Topelius prize annually for best Finnish youth novel. If this year's nominees are anything to go by, the "culture was" has truly been won where it counts, in the minds of young readers.

Grafomania reports on the nominees, and four out of the five nominees are described as being fantastic fiction. There is ecological sf, dystopic fiction, paranormal romance, and magical realism. When the one remaining nominee is explicitly mentioned to be realistic fiction, that tells me that different forms of the fantastic are becoming the norm, at least among the youth books.

Kone Foundation Grants

The Kone Foundation gives out annual grants for research, art and culture (a total of 13.6 million € in the latest round). Among the cultural grants recipients there are a couple of sfnally interesting ones.

• Maria Björklund, 10.500 € for an album-length story an accompanying exhibition of her wonderful comic strip Planeetta Z.
• Anna Kristiina Tuura, 7.900 € for a movie script called "Utopia", an ironic comedy about the future of Finland after receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees in 2017.
• Ismo Virtanen, 9.000 € for an interplanetary full-length animation film Robonauts.

Itäranta Takes the World

I mentioned some of this in an earlier post, but it’s worth mentioning again: HarperVoyager has signed Emmi Itäranta for a two-book English rights deal in UK, US, and Australia. The first, her debut novel, Memory of Water (Teemestarin kirja) will be published in the UK next spring.

Teemestarin kirja has also sold to Germany for publication by Reihe Hanser planned in 2014.

This is great news! I’m happy that one more excellent Finnish book is finding its way to a much larger audience.

Update: the book has also been sold to the Czech Republic, to Plus.