Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing

Leverhulme Lecture: The Arcade in Arcadia - Thomas Bewick, Children’s Books, and Rural Readers in Enlightenment England
2022-05-26 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/London) | Museum of English Rural Life, 6 Redlands Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 5EX, United Kingdom
Join Professor Kristin Bluemel, Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, as she explores the work of eighteenth-century artist, writer, and naturalist Thomas Bewick. This talk will explore the ways in which Bewick’s illustrations and the appeal of his work to children were fundamental in establishing nineteenth-century ideas of the rural. Famous for wood engraved books of natural history—especially the two volume A History of British Birds—Bewick won the hearts of children with his tail-pieces (“tale-pieces”) of rural life, which appeared in the white spaces at the ends of his book chapters. The talk will be accompanied by a short tour led by Curator of MERL Collections, Dr Ollie Douglas.
Professor Bluemel’s Leverhulme project puts the rural back at the heart of our thinking about culture, and develops the emerging, interdisciplinary field of ‘rural humanities’.
Bewick’s work invites us to consider how people in the past cared for their natural and human heritage. It highlights the importance of creativity in shaping how we respond to a changing world.
This event is a collaboration between CBCP and the Museum of English Rural Life. It will take place at the MERL. Registration is free and open to all, but spaces are limited. Please register here.

Image: Thomas Bewick vignette at the end of the introduction to “The Predatory Gulls” section in A History of British Birds, Vol. II, Water Birds, first published 1804. Child readers would have noticed the lost hat, whose replacement will take more out of the damp traveller’s pocket than any toll. This image is from the 1826 edition, p. 228.

Poetry Workshop at Reading Central Library: Embodied Imagery with Golnoosh Nourpanah
2022-05-28 11:00 - 12:30 | Reading Central Library, Abbey Square, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 3BQ
Part of ‘Class in Publishing and Print’
‘Her hair was like golden sunlight.’ ‘The child was quiet as a mouse.’ ‘He was caught red-handed.’
How many times have you been put off by a clichéd image, simile, or metaphor like these examples? Good poems make readers feel something rather than just impart information. This is not always easy as unlike other artforms, in poetry, language is the primary medium. How can we make the familiar seem fresh, embodied, and authentic? How can we use language in a way to have the maximum effect on the reader, to make the reader feel something and think for themselves, rather than just telling them what to think? Learn to make the readers visualise your poems. Let them feel your words, not just hear them.
In this workshop we learn to create images that are authentic and unique to us, with just our use of language. In this workshop, we learn how to avoid reproducing clichés and create images that are strong, memorable, and authentic.
This is a free event, but places are limited. Click here to book your ticket.
Bio:

Golnoosh Nourpanah is a published poet, prose writer, and lecturer. In 2019, she earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Golnoosh has authored two poetry collections and a short story collection, which was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021. She has taught creative writing at Birkbeck, UEL, the Poetry School, the University of Bedfordshire, the University of Reading and Westminster, and she’s performed her poetry in literature festivals and events across the UK and internationally.

CBCP Postgraduate Study Day Friday 1st July: Programme
2022-07-01
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is pleased to share the programme for next Friday’s first PhD Study Day.
This has been organised and convened by doctoral researchers working on areas relevant to the CBCP. It is a free event, with lunch provided: all are welcome to attend!
9:45 – 10:00 Meetup – Edith Morley 125
10:00 – 10:10 Introduction
Panel 1 10:10 – 11:25
Matthew Chambers (CBCP Visiting Research Fellow), ‘Locating the Modernist Bookshop in the Archive’;
Benjamin Bruce (DEL) ‘A tale of two tales: Ideology aesthetics and publishing at Chatto & Windus in 1922’;
Jenny Harper (DEL) ‘Censorship in the writing of the working classes: Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and John Clare’
11:25 – 11:40 Coffee break
Panel 2 11:40 – 12:30
Stephanie Alder (CBCP Early Careers Fellow) ‘New Boxes Come Across the Sea’: Exploring the Transnational Victorian Library;
Andrea De Falco (DLC) ‘New books for a new public: charting the paperback revolution in the Italian cultural industry (1945-1965)’
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch break
Panel 3 1:30 – 2:15
Lisa Barnard (Art) ‘A Body of Citational Writing’;
Antonio Gambacorta (DEL) ‘Samuel Beckett and the making of Still: con tre acqueforti’
2:15 – 2:25 Short break
Panel 4 2:25 – 3:15
Claudia R. Amenos (Typography) ‘Letterpress political posters of the Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War (1931–39)’;
Ring Yong (Typography) ‘Typographical variation in Chinese print: Missionaries, metal type and printing press in late imperial China (1813-1860)’;
Isabel Stoole (Typography) ‘Connotations of gender in 20th-century print production advertisements, with focus on images depicting the employment of women (1945–1985)’
We look forward to seeing you!

Exhibition - invitation to private viewing: 'Looking at women looking at themselves being looked at: Female representation in Charles Mozley’s work'
2022-07-22 18:00 - 19:30
You are cordially invited to attend a private viewing of the exhibition
Looking at women looking at themselves being looked at Female representation in Charles Mozley’s work
Curated by Cătălina Zlotea
Friday, 22 July 20226 pm to 7.30 pm Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of ReadingTOB2Whiteknights RoadEarley GateReading, RG6 6BZ(Sat nav RG6 7BE)
This new exhibition explores the concept of the male gaze in twentieth-century illustration. Cătălina Zlotea, a PhD researcher, analyses the work of the prolific mid-century British illustrator Charles Mozley (1914–1991) through a contemporary lens. At a moment when gender dynamics still define a perpetual cycle of inequality, this show explores how feminine stereotypes have been constructed and perpetuated in British visual culture.
The exhibition is open until 9 September, on weekdays from 10 am to 5 pm. Closed bank holidays.
Please RSVP before 17 July: c.c.zlotea@pgr.reading.ac.uk

A Room of One's Own on the High Street: Women and Personal Bookshops, 1916-1939
2022-10-13 17:00 - 18:00
Dr Matt Chambers, CBCP Research Fellow

This research seminar is free and open to all. Join us in person in the Edith Morley Building, Room G74. To join via Zoom, register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/423971097967

From 1916 onwards, a new form of bookselling became progressively more visible. Variously labelled “personal bookshops” or “bookshop salons,” small bookselling businesses, opened and operated often by women, offered a different kind of retail experience. Stock was tailored to fit a certain theme or vision; the shop was imagined as a social space and could hold events; the owners would publish books, periodicals, and pamphlets which became synonymous with the shop; and in general, the bookshop became the centre of a literary or political community. In reviewing The Sunwise Turn and the Harlem People’s Book Shop (New York City), as well as Bermondsey Books and Collet’s (London), and Shakespeare and Company and Les Maison des Amis des Livres (Paris), I will discuss how more than just a notable demographic shift, these women-led bookshops represented a change in what was possible in book retail, and permanently altered the bookselling landscape in the early twentieth century.

Book Launch: The Women Who Invented Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature
2022-11-17 17:00 - 18:30 | Edith Morley G44
Join us for a hybrid in-person/online event to mark the publication of The Women Who Invented Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature: Only the Best (Routledge: Children’s Literature and Culture Series), by Elizabeth West, CBCP Early Career Research Fellow.
This event is free and open to all. Join us in the Edith Morley Building, Room G44, to be followed by drinks at Park House. To register for the Zoom link, click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/424176642757
Publishing for children between 1930 and 1960 has been denigrated as a relatively fallow period for creativity and quality, certainly in comparison with the ‘golden ages’ of children’s literature that preceded and succeeded it. This book questions this perception by using archival evidence to argue that the work of what was predominantly a female group of editors, illustrators, authors and librarians (collectively referred to as bookwomen) resulted in many titles which are still considered as ‘classics’ today. The bookwomen reframed ideas about how children’s publishing should be approached and valued and, in doing so, laid the foundations for a subsequent generation of children’s authors and publishers who were to achieve far greater prominence. The key to the success of the bookwomen was their willingness to experiment, the strength of their relationships, and their comprehensive understanding of the book production process. By focusing on a selection of women working across all aspects of the book production process, this book demonstrates that, both individually and collectively, women capitalised on their position as ‘other’ to the existing male institutions.

Spaces of Translation: European Magazine Cultures, c. 1945-1965
2022-12-08 17:00 - 18:30
Speakers: Andrew Thacker (Nottingham Trent) and Alison E. Martin (Mainz/Germersheim)
This research seminar is free and open to all. Join us in person in the Edith Morley Building, Room G74. To join via Zoom, register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/428120508967
In this project we study a small constellation of literary and cultural magazines from three countries and language areas – Britain, France and Germany – in order to consider how, through translation, they explore and construct notions of European identity in the period following from the end of World War Two to the mid-1960s. Rapid shifts towards decolonisation, the Americanisation of European culture, the rise of anti-militarism and the strategic and ideological conflicts instigated by the Cold War all stimulated an ongoing reassessment of what the European idea stood for and whether or how it might be achieved. Using the notion of periodicals as ‘European spaces’, the project addresses how periodical culture in Britain, France, and Germany used translation to reconfigure a vision for Europe after the catastrophe of World War Two. As The Gate/Das Tor declared in 1947, art, music and literature were ‘not the property of one nation alone’ and that ‘a deeper understanding of our cultural ties with Europe is a surer way to international friendship than political treaties’. But what exactly was the significance of the translation of works of poetry, fiction, criticism, and non-fiction in this period? How did translated texts operate as vehicles for the forging of new European identities? And how did the crossing of linguistic boundaries produce alliances across national borders?

Catherine Butler, 'Studio Ghibli and British Children’s Literature in Japan'
2022-12-13 17:00 - 18:00
This talk is part of the CBCP and Outside in World Webinar series on Children’s Literature and Translation.
Join us online to hear Catherine Butler (Cardiff) talking about ‘Studio Ghibli and British Children’s Literature in Japan’.
This event is free and open to all. To register for the Zoom link, click here.
Hayao Miyazaki has had a lifelong interest in British children’s literature, and an influential role in popularising it in Japan, notably through the animations he created at Studio Ghibli. In this talk I will discuss some aspects of that contribution, and that of directors whom Miyazaki directly influenced, especially his protogé, Hiromasa Yonebayashi. But I will also ask two questions: why does Hayao Miyazaki, who loves British children’s books and has adapted several, never used Britain as a setting? And what are the consequence of taking a story from one setting and medium and putting it into another?
Catherine Butler is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University. Her academic books include Four British Fantasists (2006), Reading History in Children’s Books (with Hallie O’Donovan, 2012) and Literary Studies Deconstructed (2018), and several edited collections. Her latest book, British Children’s Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses, is due to be published by Bloomsbury in 2023. She has also published six novels for children and teenagers. Catherine is Editor-in-Chief of Children’s Literature in Education.

Anthony Glinoer, 'Between Archives and Databases. The Archives éditoriales platform.'
2023-01-12 17:00 - 18:00
Join us online to hear Anthony Glinoer (University of Sherbrooke, Quebec) talking about The Archives éditoriales platform http://archiveseditoriales.net.
This event is free and open to all. Join us in person in T4, Department of Typography and Graphic Communication. To register for the Zoom link, click here.
A presentation of the internet platform Archives éditoriales (http://archiveseditoriales.net) and of the research partnership project of francophone publishers’ archives, which made the platform possible. Amongst the tools made available on the platform (a database of more than a thousand interviews with francophone publishers about their publishing activity, digital exhibitions, a blog, etc.), Anthony will focus on the database of publishers’ archives, addressing the questions of why, how and when publishing houses tend to donate their archives to public institutions.
Anthony Glinoer is a professor at the University of Sherbrooke (Quebec). His work focusses primarily on the history of publishing (Naissance de l’Éditeur with Pascal Durand in 2005), on the study of representations of the literary life (La bohème. Une figure de l’imaginaire social in 2018) and on groups of authors and artists (L’âge des cénacles with Vincent Laisney in 2013). Anthony Glinoer has also led the Socius project, which has produced re-editions of the classics in literary social theory, re-edited or original bibliographies, and a lexicon of concepts (see the open-access site: ressources-socius.info).
(The illustration is a badge from the Prise de Parole publishing house, Sudbury, Archives of the CRCCF, Fonds Paul-François-Sylvestre (P179), M81-14, Ottawa.)

Valeria Illuminati, Roberta Pederzoli, and Beatrice Spallaccia, 'The G-Book Project. Literature for children and YAs from a gender perspective: literary and translation issues'
2023-01-25 17:00 - 18:00
This talk is part of the CBCP and Outside in World Webinar series on Children’s Literature and Translation and is open to all. To register to join us via Zoom click here.
Speakers: Valeria Illuminati, Roberta Pederzoli, and Beatrice Spallaccia (University of Bologna, MeTRa Centre – Research Centre on Mediation and Translation by and for Children and Young Adults)
The CBCP x OIW webinar series is delighted to welcome a team of speakers from the European G-Book projects. The projects G-BOOK 1 and 2 (Gender Identity: Child Readers and Library Collections and European teens as readers and creators in gender-positive narratives) aim to promote gender positive children’s and young adult literature in terms of roles and models, a literature that is open-minded, plural, varied, free from stereotypes, and that encourages respect and diversity. The first part of the webinar will develop a critical-theoretical reflection on literature for children and young adults from a gender perspective and on its translation. In particular, we will discuss:

gender representations and stereotypes
families
male and female characters
LGBTQ+ issues
and the G-BOOK European projects.

The second part will explore case studies of LGBTQ+ themed illustrated books in English and French translated into Italian. We will analyze both the paratext and the text itself, showing how in the transfer from one language and culture to another there are some shifts and changes, which are not necessarily questionable, but however present the source text in a new light and produce a different effect on the target reader.

Objects made of letters: Concrete poetry in Britain, 1963–75
2023-02-02 - 2023-03-28 | University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Edith Morley, G44
Exhibition curated by Rick Poynor at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
Open by appointment until 28 March 2023. Please contact Emma Minns for an appointment.
Based on material from the collection of the late Andrew Belsey, philosophy lecturer, concrete poet and MA graduate from Typography & Graphic Communication, “Objects made of letters” explores and illustrates concrete poetry in its heyday. The experience of a concrete poem is always visual, the meaning – in the absence of conventional poetic imagery and syntax – often elusive. The exhibition provides a survey of key publications and illuminating examples, and focuses on the output of three significant figures: Dom Sylvester Houédard, Bob Cobbing and John Furnival.
Curated by Rick Poynor, with assistance from Eric Kindel, Emma Minns and Geoff Wyeth.

Eric Kindel, 'Stencil work: scenes and themes'
2023-03-09 17:30 - 18:30
This event is free for all. Join us in Room T4 in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. To join via Zoom register here.
This talk will survey scenes and themes of stencil work spanning six centuries, discussing and illustrating the surprising variety of uses to which stencils have been put in the production of graphic and textual documents, marks, and messages. Drawing on more than twenty years of research, the talk will explore aesthetic, technical, social, entrepreneurial, regulatory, and linguistic dimensions of stencil work, presenting scenes that are hybrid and in-between and themes that are perennial and therefore historically durable. Among the scenes will be so-called stencil “incunabula”, stencil work typical of France, Britain, and the USA, the multilingual complexities of stencil terminology, and the conundrum of stencil type and typefaces. On show will be early “cut work”, magnificent books made in monastic and secular ateliers, stencils cut by known makers and anonymous ones, depictions of stencil work across the centuries, large-scale stencil advertisements, ingenious stencil devices, and much more. The ensemble will be delivered as a sequence of visual and verbal evidence to build a synoptic presentation of this attractive domain of graphic communication.
Prof Eric Kindel is the Professor of Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. His staff profile, includes links to publications and talks.
Example publications:
Stencil: a descriptive bibliography
Delight of men and gods: Christiaan Huygens’s new method of printing
Patents progress: the Adjustable Stencil
Example talks:
Objet-type, the French stencil letter
Stencilled posters in Paris in the nineteenth century (with Pierre Pané-Farré)
Upper right image courtesy of St Bride Library, London.

Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, 'Cold Books in Hot Lands: Public and Academic Discourse on Franklin Book Programs (1952-1978)'
2023-03-23 17:00 - 18:30
This online seminar will be presented by Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, recently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research fellow at the Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands.
This event is free and open to all. To register for the zoom link, click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/424960617647
The various activities of the Franklin Book Programs, an American Cold War cultural diplomacy initiative for the development of indigenous publishing in the developing world and winning hearts and minds have been subject to public and academic query since its foundation in 1952. Reports and surveys of its activities, aims and objectives, and achievements have been featured in both American and non-American press, from The New York Times, Publishers Weekly to The Pakistan Observer and Al-Bilad. To exemplify the discourse, I present the story of how Franklin/New York convinced a young professor to put aside his paper but encouraged and supported the publication of another piece by a graduate student. Almost half a century later, I am asking the-now-retired-but-distinguished professor why did he oblige. This should shed some light on how Franklin/New York acted as a gatekeeper and promotor of a certain take on its operation.
Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam is an independent researcher. He was until recently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research fellow at Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands. His recent research has focused on the cultural Cold War with a focus on the activities of Franklin Book Programs in the Middle East (Coldbihot). He is the author of Literary Translation in Modern Iran: A Sociological Study (2014). He is also a managing editor of the Journal of World Literature.

Author event: Kit de Waal in conversation - in person/hybrid event
2023-05-03 18:00 - 19:30 | Van Emden Lecture Theatre, Edith Morley Building, Whiteknights Campus, University of Reading, United Kingdom
In conversation with Shelley Harris, Creative Writing programme director, Kit will be discussing her writings – both fiction and memoir – and the impact she’s had in making publishing a better place for working-class writers. This is an in person/hybrid event.
Kit de Waal is a multi-award-winning author of short stories, novels, and an autobiography. My Name is Leon (2016), her first novel, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. It was recently televised by the BBC, with a cast including Christopher Eccleston and Sir Lenny Henry, who also voiced the audiobook.
Kit has a passion for getting diverse voices heard. She used some of her author advance to set up the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Scholarship at Birkbeck to help improve working-class representation in the arts. It is dedicated to supporting a budding writer from a low-income household or other marginalized backgrounds. In its first year it attracted 138 applicants: this in turn, attracted other donations which has enabled the funding of additional scholarships.
She is the editor of Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers (2019), the result of a project with Unbound and regional writing development organisations to feature working-class writers: this also involved mentoring and supporting new writers.
Her autobiography Without Warning & Only Sometimes – Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood published in 2022 and was a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. The Guardian described it as ‘A richly observed portrait of a working-class childhood and adolescence that finds magic in the mundane’.
This is a free in person/hybrid event but everyone attending (whether in person or online) will require a ticket from Eventbrite: click here for in person; click here for online.
Questions for Kit are welcome but we request they are submitted in advance by email to cbcp@reading.ac.uk by Monday 24th April, please. This will allow Kit sufficient time to consider her answers.

2nd CBCP Postgraduate Symposium
2023-05-25 08:00 - 17:00 | University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Edith Morley, G44
The 2nd CBCP Postgraduate Symposium will be held at the University of Reading. It will mainly be an in-person event with an option for remote presentation and attendance.
PGR Symposium Programme
Thursday May 25th, Edith Morley, G44
If you would like to attend the conference either in person or online, please sign up here
9.00 – 9:15 am Arrival and refreshments (provided)
9:15 – 9: 20 am Welcome note and Introduction
9:20 – 10:20 am Bibliophiles and readers
Victoria Stevens (Canterbury Christchurch University, UK), “Peeping through the Library Windows: bibliographical insights into the character of a Kent gentry”
Mary Grover (Former Senior Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University, UK), “‘Something gets hold of you’: Reading for pleasure in an industrial city”
Akshat Seth (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India): “Attitudes to Popular Print and Contemporary Reading Practices Among Hindi Literary Academics in India”
10:25 – 11:25 am Print and literary cultures
Isabel Stoole (University of Reading, UK), “Worker and homemaker: the characterisations of women in print production technology advertisements, 1945–65”
Jenny Harper (Universities of Reading and Exeter, Mid Pennine Arts, UK), “How to ‘cut out all the culture ’when ‘culture is ordinary’?”
Benjamin Bruce (University of Reading, UK), “Publishing Poetry in 1922: The Nature of Popular Verse and its Post-War Demise”
11: 25 – 11: 35 pm Coffee Break
11:35 am – 12:15 pm Publisher’s Series
Lucia Vigutto (University of Bologna, Italy), “Dragons also for children: The Italian translation of Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien”
Fatih Aşan (Boğaziçi University, Turkey), “Observations About Ottoman-Turkish Publisher’s Series (1870-1900)”
12:20 – 1:00 pm Guest Talk
Alex Kither (Curator, Printed Heritage Collections, British Library) and
Dr Naomi Billingsley (Research Development Manager at the British Library), “Collections-based research in the British Library”
1:00 – 2:00 pm Lunch (provided)
2:05 – 2:45 pm Innovating the book form
Berta Ferrer (University of Reading, UK) “Designwriting in House of Leaves: the role of design in unconventional novels of the 21st
century”
Louisa Hunter-Bradley (King’s College London, UK), “Plantin on the page: The format and visual presence of Plantin’s music publications”
2:50 – 3:30 pm Book technologies
Swara Shukla (University of Muenster, Germany) “Bringing the Victorian Serial into the Digital Age”
Angelica Cremascoli (University of Milan, Italy), “Optical-multimedia publishing in Italy: the decade of the ‘round’ book and the new spaces of knowledge (1988-1998)”
3:30 – 3:40 pm Afternoon refreshments (provided)
3:45 – 4: 25 pm Print Technologies
Ring Yong (University of Reading, UK), “Looking at Chinese woodblocks: A revised account of the technology, its imprints, and production costs”
Claudia Rifaterra Amenós (University of Reading, UK), “Letterpress Political Posters from the Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War (1931-1939) from the CRAI
Collection, University of Barcelona”
4:30 pm – 5:10 pm Illustrated books
Katharine Smales (University College London, UK) “Perry Starlight, Space Explorer: Creating a picturebook to explain research to young
children”
Stephanie Montalti (St. John’s University, US), “Illustrating Cinderella as a Reader: Experimental Front Matter & Metafiction in Walter Crane’s Cinderella’s Picture Book”
The symposium will be an occasion for PhD students and Postdoctoral researchers to showcase their research while engaging with the wider community of researchers within the CBCP. No costs to attend: lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Enquiries should be sent to: Andrea Romanzi and Pritha Mukherjee.
Delegates may also like to register to attend the Marina Warner talk on ‘Archives, history and memory in memoir writing’ which is taking place on the same evening, as an in person/hybrid event. For more information please click here.

Archives, history and memory in memoir writing - a talk by Marina Warner
2023-05-25 17:30 - 19:00 | Museum of English Rural Life, 6 Redlands Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 5EX, United Kingdom
Writer and academic Dame Professor Marina Warner will discuss drawing on archives and the interweaving of history and memoir-writing. In her memoir ‘Inventory of a Life Mislaid’, Warner uses memory and imagination as well as writing and objects to recreate the extraordinary world of her childhood. [Cover design by Sophie Herxheimer.]
She has recently presented some of her family papers to the University book and publishing collections, relating to her father’s work in establishing a branch of WH Smith’s in Cairo after the second World War. A selection of artefacts from the WH Smith archives held by the University of Reading will be on display.
This event is run in partnership with the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL).
Dame Professor Marina Warner CH, DBE, FRSL, FBA is a writer and academic. Her works include novels, short stories and studies of art, myths, symbols and fairy tales. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.
This will be an in person/online hybrid event with live streaming via Zoom to remote individuals who have pre-registered to attend. The video files of the talk will be published online after the event.
A selection of artefacts from the WH Smith archives held by the University of Reading will be on display and attendees will have the chance to view this from 5.30pm with refreshments available. The talk will start at 6.00pm.
To book tickets to attend the event in person at the Museum of English Rural Life please click here
To book tickets for the online event (which covers the talk only) please click here
The event will finish at 7.00pm.

CBCP Summer School - Cultures of the book: lithography, consumption, reading
2023-06-20 - 2023-06-21 | University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Edith Morley, G44
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing at the University of Reading has released the full programme for their inaugural Summer School to be held on 20 and 21 June 2023. The event will be held at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication and Special Collections at the University.
‘Cultures of the book: lithography, consumption, reading’ will explore how books have been made, consumed and read following the invention of lithography in the early nineteenth century. Talks by leading scholars and practitioners will be combined with a hands-on approach using the University’s collections and archives.
Keynote speakers include Prof Rathna Ramanathan on ‘Beyond the margins: Intercultural collaborations in independent publishing’ and Prof Michael Twyman talking about lithography and printed ephemera.
Other talks will cover the origins of today’s typefaces and text/picture integration (Paul Luna), as well as book-related ephemera popular in the late nineteeth and early twentieth century – the ‘Birthday Book’ (Cătălina Zlotea) and bookplates (Liz West).
Practical sessions on lithographic printing will be available (Geoff Wyeth and Borna Izadpanah), together with ‘hands-on’ examination of book-related printed ephemera (with materials in English and French) from the Centre for Ephemera Studies (Emma Minns).
Participants will also be able to view the exhibition ‘Evolution of the Chinese Typeform’ (curated by Xunchang Cheng).
Enrolment is open now and places can be booked here. Please email with any enquiries.

Multisensory translation for children: Mirror by Jeannie Baker as a soundscape audiobook
2023-06-27 17:00 - 18:30
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing in partnership with Outside in World, the organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children’s books in translation, are delighted to announce the latest event in their seminar series on translation for children:
Multisensory translation for children: Mirror by Jeannie Baker as a soundscape audiobook
This is event is free and open to all. To register for the zoom link, click here.
CBCP and OIW will be in conversation with Rafaela Lemos, translator, and Nuno Bento, sound artist, about their project to translate picturebook Mirror by Jeannie Baker (Walker Books, 2010) into a soundscape audiobook, aimed especially at visually impaired Portuguese children.
Rafaela Lemos – Born and raised in Portugal, Rafaela Lemos has always been a creative mind. After completing a Modern Languages BA (Spanish and Mandarin) University of Hull, with First Class Honours, she moved to London where she completed a Masters in Audiovisual Translation from the University of Roehampton. She is currently working as a Localisation Producer for a children’s media entertainment company and as a freelance illustrator and audiovisual translator.
Nuno Bento – Foley artist and sound designer from Lisbon, Portugal: you can find out all about his award-winning work in film and game design here: https://www.nunobento.com/home

Bookshops Online and On the High Street
2023-07-03 - 2023-07-04 | University of Reading, London Road Campus
The 2nd Annual Bookselling Research Network Conference, in association with the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing, 3rd-4th July 2023 at the University of Reading, UK.
To register for in-person attendance, please go to event store here.
Jeff Deutsch, in his recent In Praise of Good Bookstores, reflected that because “we no longer need bookstores to buy books…bookstores might well be an inefficient and inconvenient way to buy books in the twenty-first century.” Yet, as he goes on to show, and the industry seems to confirm, “good bookstores” are evident everywhere. The second annual Bookselling Research Network conference looks to discuss both the impact of bookshops in an era of online retailing and how booksellers, the book trade, and book-reading communities use online environments to return people back to the bookshop – wherever in the world these might be. What are the affordances, pitfalls, and challenges of bookselling in a digital era? What innovative, unique, or era-defying practices are evident and thriving? How have changes in bookselling affected literary production and reception? What cultural or political concerns remain prevalent for booksellers? What does it mean to operate a bookshop today?
Schedule
Monday, 03 July
London Road Campus, University of Reading
11:00-11:30 Registration & welcome (room G03) Coffee
11:30-13:00 PANEL 1: Bookshop Profiles (room G07)
Chair: Nicola Wilson (University of Reading)
* Sarah Pyke (Institute of English Studies, University of London) “Literary and Extraliterary Reading at Gay’s the Word bookshop”
* Andrew Thacker (Nottingham Trent University) “Conversation and Daily Liveliness: City Lights Bookstore”
* Peter Willis (Coventry University) “The Bookplace: Community Bookselling and Publishing in Peckham 1977-1994”
13:00-13:45 Lunch (room G03)
13:45-15:15 PANEL 2: Independent Booksellers (room G07)
Chair: Matthew Chambers (University of Reading)
* Lanora Jennings (Princeton University Press) “A Store of Her Own: The History and Legacy of Women-Owned Bookstores in America”
*Aditi Kumar & Charlie Richards (Bookbag, Exeter) “Independent Bookshops in the Publishing Marketplace: In Conversation With Bookbag”
* Louise O’Hare (London Bookshop Map) “Interrogating the “Halo” Effect of Independent Bookshops – Mapping Cultural Ecosystems and Interdependencies”
15:15-15.30 Break
15:30-16:30 Presentation and exhibition of Bookseller Documents (Special Collections)
18:00-19:00
Booksellers’ Panel (At Fourbears Books, Caversham)
Moderator: Philip Jones (Editor, The Bookseller)
Panelists: Emma Corfield-Walters (Book-ish), Alex Forbes (Fourbears Books), Eben Muse (Parnassus Book Service)

Tuesday, 04 July
9:30-11:00 PANEL 3: Bookselling: Other Spaces, Concepts (room G07)
Chair: Eben Muse
* John Rigney (Second Reader Books) “A Moving Collection: Books, Friends and Poetry at the Second Reader Bookshop”
*Pritha Mukherjee (University of Reading) “‘Pirated’ Boi Bajaar in Kolkata: Books that Sell”
*Samantha Rayner (University College London) “Penguin Books and Penguin Bookselling: A ‘Quiet Radicalism’”
11:00-11:15 Break (room G03)
11:15-12:15 Keynote Address: Corinna Norrick-Rühl (University of Münster)
“Bücher & Books: Cross-Lingual Bookselling in German Bricks-and-Mortar Bookstores”
12:15-13:00 Lunch (room G03)
13:00-14:30 PANEL 4: Algorithms and Bookselling (room G07)
Chair: Samantha Rayner (University College London)
*Anna Muenchrath (Appalachian State University) “Selling Books with Algorithms”
*Nayantara Srinivasan (University of Münster) “Digital Bookselling and ‘Independent Bookstore Activism’ in India”
*David Piovesan (Lyon 3 University) “Bookshops in Europe: The Era of Digital Competition”
14:30-14:45 Break (room G03)
14:45-15:15 Closing remarks/open discussion (room G07)
We are holding the conference in-person at the University of Reading, but we can make accommodations if you are unable to join us there. Any sessions with virtual participation will be hybrid and some of our events will be only for those attending (Special Collections, Waterstones).
To register for in-person attendance, please go to event store here. There will be a £20 fee (for staff/salaried) to help us cover the cost of catering. We are working on a registration process for those attending online. For now, if you could please let us know as soon as possible if you plan on attending online and we will get back to you with a link and other information (contact Dr Matthew Chambers: m.chambers@reading.ac.uk).
The Call for Papers can be seen here.
For more information please contact m.chambers@reading.ac.uk

Balam and Lluvia’s House: Translating Poetry for Children
2023-07-20 17:30 - 19:00
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing in partnership with Outside in World, the organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children’s books in translation, are delighted to announce the latest event in their seminar series on translation for children:
Balam and Lluvia’s House: Translating Poetry for Children
This is event is free and open to all. To register for the zoom link, click here.
Balam and Lluvia are siblings who catch fireflies, bid farewell to their pet fish in the bathroom, and wait for Ratón Pérez to collect their teeth. In Balam and Lluvia’s House, the secret tastes and sounds of the everyday are waiting to be found.
To celebrate the publication of Balam and Lluvia’s House, written by Julio Serrano Echeverría, illustrated by Yolanda Mosquera and translated by Lawrence Schimel (Emma Press, 2023) and a PEN Translates Award winner, we will be talking to the publisher, author and translator. We will be asking them all about the book, how it was written, how it came to be translated into English, and the joys of translating poetry.
Georgia Wall is publishing manager at The Emma Press, an independent publishing house based in Birmingham, UK, which aims to make literature and publishing as welcoming and accessible as possible. The Emma Press was founded in 2021 by Emma Dai’an Wright and specialises in poetry, short fiction, essays and children’s books.
Julio Serrano Echeverría is a Guatemalan writer, poet, filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Mestizo, African and Mayan descent. He has held fellowships from the Fundación Carolina, the Iberoamerican Artists Residence FONCA-AECID and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in the US, where he has also been artist in residence and lectures regularly on poetry and Latin American culture. His poetry collections include Tierra, Antes del mar, Estados de la materia, Central Ámerica, and his children’s books include En botas de astronauta and Dos cabezas para meter un gol. He was one of the founders of the Quetzaltenango International Poetry Festival. He received the 2022 Premio Gabo, the most prestigious award for Latin American journalism, for his work as co-founder and creative coordinator of Agencia Ocote, an interdisciplinary Guatemalan digital media outlet that views journalism in dialogue with art, historic memory, transitional justice and women’s rights. He has participated in many international poetry festivals, and his work is also translated into Bengali, English, French and the Mayan languages Q´eqchí, K´iche’, and Kaqchikel.
Lawrence Schimel (New York City, 1971) is a full-time author, writing in both Spanish and English, who has published over 130 books in a wide range of genres. His picture books have won a Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, a White Raven from the International Youth Library in Munich, and have been chosen by IBBY for Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities (three times), among other honors. His writings have been translated into over fifty languages, including Icelandic, Maltese, Farsi, Kurdish, Basque, Luxembourgish, Changana, Romansch, and Japanese. In addition to his own writing, he is a prolific literary translator, primarily into English and into Spanish, who has published over 150 books. His translations into English have won a Batchelder Honor from the American Library Association, a PEN Translates Award from English PEN (three times), a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship (with Layla Benitez-James), and was Highly Commended in the CLiPPA, among other honors. He started the Spain chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and illustrators and served as its Regional Advisor for five years. He also coordinated the International SCBWI Conference in Madrid and the first two SCBWI-Bologna Book Fair conferences. He lives in Madrid, Spain.

Publishing Anti-fascism, CBCP annual conference, 11-12 September 2023
2023-09-11 - 2023-09-12
We are delighted to announce the Provisional Programme for our conference on Publishing Anti-fascism.
This international conference will bring together scholars of anti-fascist publishing activity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from any linguistic or geographical context. Our aim is to broaden the understanding of anti-fascist publishing by drawing attention to previously neglected publications, publishers, and perspectives – from Europe and beyond.
Despite the frequent focus on national contexts, much anti-fascist publishing was transnational in scope. While refugees from fascism crossed borders from one country to another, their anti-fascist texts could appear around the world in multiple translations simultaneously. In the 1930s and 40s, global institutions such as the Communist International and the British Ministry of Information (responsible for propaganda across the whole of the British Empire), gave many anti-fascist texts a truly world-wide reach.
Since the end of the Second World War, anti-fascism has not become superfluous as a movement although it is often misunderstood. As Braskén, Featherstone and Copsey have argued, ‘political myths and misrepresentations of anti-fascist histories are constantly used in contemporary debates’ (Anti-fascism in a global perspective, 2021). Whilst taking a broad approach to the history and legacy of anti-fascist publishing, this conference seeks to fully contextualise these activities in order to understand to what degree they still offer a counterpoint to today’s political right. After all, as Bill V. Mullen and Christopher Vials have pointed out, the USA’s anti-fascist tradition goes back to the 1920s, long before the existence of Antifa (The US Antifascism Reader, 2020).
Though we hope to expand current knowledge of European anti-fascist publishing history and practice, this conference also welcomes contributions which look beyond a white European setting, perhaps exploring the intersections of anti-fascism, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism in publishing cultures. For instance, in 1933, after Nazis ransacked his offices and deported him to England, the Black pan-Africanist journalist George Padmore argued in an editorial for his communist publication, The Negro Worker, that ‘fascism is the greatest danger which confronts not only the white workers, but is the most hostile movement against [black people].’ He also drew an explicit comparison between the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, writing that “the fascists in Germany are preaching race hatred and advocating lynch law” (The Negro Worker vol. 3, no. 4-5 [Apr-May 1933]). Yet these historical parallels and continuities are often overlooked in discussions of anti-fascist history.
We are excited to offer two additional events as part of the conference. One is a screening of Steve Hatton’s 2011 documentary film, Heilig, about the Austrian anti-Nazi journalist Bruno Heilig, and his son, Gerhard, who came to England as a refugee on the Kindertransport. The film will be introduced by a talk by the filmmaker. The other is a tour of Reading University’s collection of anti-fascist Spanish civil war posters, housed by the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication.
The conference will be hosted by the University of Reading’s Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing, and will take place in Reading. Virtual attendance will also be possible, as the conference will take a hybrid form. There will be minimal or no cost for attendance.
Organising committee at the University of Reading: Ali Brown, Dr Sophie Heywood, Prof Daniela La Penna, Dr Ellen Pilsworth, Dr Marta Simo-Comas, Dr Nicola Wilson, Dr Ute Wölfel.
Image credit: Wisconsin Historical Society, Image ID: 14802. Can be viewed online at https://wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM148402

Up in Arms: posters for protest, solidarity, engagement and action
2023-09-11 - 2023-12-08 | Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading, RG6 6BZ
Up in Arms has been curated to align with our annual conference, ‘Publishing Anti-fascism’ convened and organised by Ellen Pilsworth.
The exhibition includes material from the collection of twentieth-century posters from the Lettering, Printing and Graphic Design Collections in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. It displays posters from a range of sources, some designed by well-known designers including Robin Fior and David King. The exhibition was curated and designed by Clara Fidler-Brown as part of her experience as a Collections Assistant, with support from Ellen Pilsworth, Emma Minns, Sue Walker and Geoff Wyeth.

The Up in Arms exhibition space in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication

Concentration Camps and Kindertransport: Two stories of Jewish Refugees in Britain - film screening and Q&A
2023-09-11 17:30 - 19:00 | Reading Biscuit Factory, Unit 1A, Queen's Walk (Corner Of Oxford Road), Reading, RG1 7QE, United Kingdom
Join us for this screening of the short film, Heilig, which interviews the Austrian Jewish Kindertransportee Gerhard Heilig and tells the story of his father, Bruno, who survived two concentration camps before finding refuge in England.
An introduction by Dr Ellen Pilsworth (Lecturer in German, University of Reading) and Q&A with film-maker Steven Hatton will explore how Bruno and Gerhard’s stories represent different aspects of Britain’s response to the Nazis’ persecution of Austrian Jews.

The event will be held at Reading Biscuit Factory and is open to Publishing Anti-fascism conference delegates, members of the University and the general public. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance via Eventbrite.

The Children's Books History Society Study Day on Families in Children's Literature (Part 2)
2023-10-28 09:30 - 16:30 | Church Hall of the Crown Court Church of Scotland, Russell Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2B 5EZ
The Children’s Books History Society Study Day
Saturday, 28th October 2023
9.30am-4.30pm
Venue:
Church Hall of the Crown Court Church of Scotland
Russell Street
Covent Garden
London
WC2B 5EZ
The theme for the Study Day is Families in Children’s Literature (Part 2).
The Study Day includes the following four talks & costs £25 per person (includes lunch):

Brian Sibley: Tove Jansson’s Family Moomintroll: The family we’d all like to have
Hilary Clare: Charlotte Yonge, the first writer for teenage girls
(**Celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Yonge**)

Howard Bailes: The Carey Family: an exploration of the novels of Ronald Welch
Sarah Jardine-Willoughby: The Gatty Family: Close and Talented

To find out more & to book a place, please complete the booking form available here.
Speaker biographies
Brian Sibley is an author, broadcaster and screenwriter, and has written and presented numerous dramas, documentaries and features on BBC radio since 1976. He has also written numerous books, including several books on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and on children’s writers such as C.S. Lewis. He has also contributed columns and reviews to several newspapers and magazines. He is the President of the Lewis Carroll Society, and an honorary member of the CBHS, The Magic Circle and the Tolkien Society.
Hilary Clare read Modern History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford and subsequently trained as an archivist at the University of North Wales, Bangor. After a few years working in that field she became a teacher, and later a professional genealogist. An interest is children’s books in general led to specializing in girls’ school stories, and also in the Victorian writer Charlotte Mary Yonge.
Howard Bailes encountered Ronald Welch’s wonderful books as a child and they contributed to his early fascination with history. Although he has plenty of historical and literary interests, he admits to a certain leaning towards military history, rather like Ronald himself. For some twenty years he led St Paul’s Girls’ School’s annual tour of the Great War battlefields. Howard’s PhD thesis concerned the Victorian army, on which he has published, along with articles on various topics, a book on the arts-and-crafts architect Gerald Horsley and a history of St Paul’s Girls’ School.
Sarah Jardine-Willoughby is a retired librarian who worked mainly in the University sector, first at the LSE and then for nearly twenty years at Middlesex University, and also spent few years as librarian for the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance. She is an avid book collector of mainly children’s books including Mrs Molesworth, Charlotte Yonge, Maria Edgeworth and of course Mrs Ewing & Mrs Gatty. She is the Treasurer of the CBHS and more recently of the Charlotte M Yonge Fellowship

Typodiversity 01: exploring the Arabic script world
2023-11-03 - 2023-11-04 | Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading, RG6 6BZ
UPDATE: The full programme for the two day event on 3 & 4 November is available here.
CBCP is collaborating with Typodiversity, an open, participatory event series combining talks and workshops on the intersection of research and practice in typography and type design. Our agenda raises issues of agency, resource, representation, and inclusion in the development of environments for authoring, design, and distribution. We aim to place informed, representative narratives at the heart of discourse.
We intend that each event adapts to the environment in which it is held, shaped by the team and hosting location. There are two conditions for Typodiversity events: 1) that they are run with as little expenditure as possible, taking advantage of institutional resources; and 2) that the recorded content of the talks and workshops will be openly and freely accessible.
We prioritise a hybrid online format to minimise the impact of travel and attendance costs, visa hurdles, legal limitations, and time zone differences. While we recognise that English functions as a shared language for global scholarship and exchange, we aim to actively support other languages as an alternative. To achieve this, we ask presenters to provide a video of their presentation in advance, so that subtitles can be added: English presentations will have subtitles in the relevant second language of the event, and vice versa. We are starting this initiative with only one pair of languages to gain experience of time and effort required, and aim to extend to more languages as we grow. To facilitate real-time Q&A sessions and open conversation rooms, we aim to provide interpreters for real-time translation.
The first event will take place at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading (UK), on the 3rd & 4th November 2023, on the theme of “exploring the Arabic script world.” Talks, speakers and workshops will be announced shortly. Please follow us on Twitter and Instagram for updates and to stay connected.
https://twitter.com/typodiversity
https://www.instagram.com/typodiversity/

Stickers as self-authorised ‘publishing’ in urban spaces: The graphic language, themes, and localisations of stickers in the Ruhr area, Germany
2023-11-30 17:00 - 18:00 | Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading, RG6 6BZ
Speaker: Irmi Wachendorff (University of Reading)

This research seminar is free & open to all.
Join us in person in the University of Reading’s Department of Typography, Room T4.
To join via MS Teams, please register here.

Irmi Wachendorff’s presentation will analyse a dataset of 5500 tagged and geo-referenced stickers in public space from the Signs of the Metropolis research project (Ziegler et al. 2022) which explored visual multilingualism in the Ruhr area in Germany. She will focus on typographic and semiotic visual analysis, discuss stickers in comparison to other signs in urban space, and examine the publicised themes.
Stickers are one of the smallest and yet – on looking closer – one of the most visually expressive and liberated forms of signs in urban space (Wachendorff 2021). Clustered on dedicated canvases such as lampposts, road signs and electricity boxes, they are placed by various stakeholders with different goals: supporters of political parties, protest movements, members of football clubs, music fans, sticker artists, and commercial actors. Stickering is an act of democratisation and place-making in which citizens as authors negotiate their social and cultural positions through visual signs in the urban environment (Vasileva 2021).
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Irmi Wachendorff is an Associate Professor in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. She is a graphic designer and design historian with specialisations in typography and sociolinguistics. Her PhD focussed on ‘Typographic Landscapes – Letters in Cities as Social Artefacts’ at the University of Duisburg-Essen and was funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. Irmi is passionate about design education, the practice, theory and history of graphic communication, typography and visual culture, lettering in urban space, the relationship of typography and language, and the bridge between graphic design and sociolinguistic disciplines.

Heinemann and Biafractivist Authors: Politics of Publishing the Rebel
2023-12-07 17:00 - 18:00 | Room 257, Edith Morley Building, University of Reading, RG6 6EL
Speaker: Dr Abba Abba (University of Reading)

This research seminar is free & open to all.
Join us in person in the Edith Morley Building, Room 257.
To join via MS Teams, register here.
Dr Abba Abba’s paper interrogates the archival and literary evidence of Heinemann’s minoritization of Biafran voices and politicisation of publishing them during the Nigeria-Biafra war. It argues that some significant publisher-author correspondences and unpublished materials reflecting the perspectives of Biafractivist authors, which are kept at the African Writers Series’ Archive at the University of Reading, can function as research tools for engaging and reclaiming the perceived “rebel” authors’ voices and the publisher’s ambivalent circumstances during the war. Relying on a postcolonial reading of Homi Bhabha’s “Third space” as a theoretical strategy, and deploying archival methodology and its application to literary intersectionality, it teases out how these materials represent Biafrans as “outsiders within” Nigeria., and why Biafran voices fall through the cracks in the war’s historicity through an analysis of their experiences in selected documents and unpublished materials on the war
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Dr Abba Abba is currently a British Academy Visiting Research Fellow, Department of English Literature, University of Reading, with some research visits at the Special Collections Archive at MERL. He is a Fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service – DAAD (completed a postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Humboldt University, Berlin, 2018–2019). He is also a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (completed his another Postdoctoral Fellowship in the African Humanities Programme with Residency at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 2021–2022). Abba won the Nigeria-LNG Prize for Literary Criticism 2019 as well as the Association of Nigerian Authors Prizes for Literary Criticism for both 2019 and 2022. Author of the novel The Ugly Queen, and the plays Lunatic on the Throne and The Blood Price, Abba’s research interests cut across the conversations of literature with cultural, ecocritical and archival ecologies. A Lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University Lokoja, Nigeria, Abba has previously served as the Head, Department of English and Literary Studies, Edwin Clark University, Kiagbodo Nigeria. He received his MA and PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Translating and Publishing Turkish Literature in the Anglosphere
2024-01-18 - 2024-01-19
This two-day hybrid symposium was organized by Özlem Berk Albachten and Daniela la Penna and is supported by the British Academy.
It will take place from 18-19 January 2024 at the University of Reading and online. Day 1 (18 January) will be hybrid and Day 2 (19 January) will be online-only. The full programme for the symposium is below.

For online attendance (5-7pm) on the 18 January, please register here*
For in-person attendance (5-7pm) on the 18 January in Room 125, Edith Morley Building, University of Reading Whiteknights Campus, please register by emailing your full name and any access requirements to cbcp@reading.ac.uk
For online attendance (1-6pm) on the 19 January, please register here*

(*If the registration form does not open up in your internet browser, clearing your cache may get around this problem. Instructions on how to do this are here. Alternatively, you can try another browser such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. If the problem persists, please email cbcp@reading.ac.uk)
The symposium will bring together academics, translators, editors, and literary agents to discuss issues concerning translating and publishing Turkish literary works in the English-speaking world from a variety of perspectives.
Keynote speakers include Professor Maureen Freely speaking about her over 20 years of experience as a translator between English and Turkish and Professor Aron Aji on translating Turkish “National Classics” for a present-minded market and readership.
Contributors will discuss the presence of Turkish literature in the English language (Arzu Akbatur) and the reception of Turkish fiction in the Anglophone world (Duygu Tekgül). Speakers will also offer perspectives of literary agents (Amy Spangler) and independent publishers (Nefise Kahraman) in bringing Turkish literary works into English.
Other talks will discuss the presence of Turkish literature (Arzu Akbatur) and the reception of Turkish fiction in the Anglophone world (Duygu Tekgül)
Programme
Thursday, 18 January
Location: Online & Room 125 Edith Morley Building, University of Reading Whiteknights campus
17.00 -17.15 Welcome
17:15 -18:15 Keynote 1: Professor Maureen Freely (University of Warwick): Translating the landscape: An overview of 20 years spent traveling between Turkish and English
(Chair: Özlem Berk Albachten)
Friday 19 January
Location: Online only
14:00 – 14:15 Welcome
14:15 – 14:45 Özlem Berk Albachten (Boğaziçi University): Turkish Literature in English: A Bibliographical Survey.
14:45 -15:15 Dr. Duygu Tekgül (Bahçeşehir University): The Reception of Contemporary Turkish Fiction in the Anglophone World: Patterns and Themes
(Chair: Özlem Berk Albachten)
15:15 -15:30 Break
15:30 -16:00 Amy Spangler (AnatoliaLit Agency): On the Agency of Agents and Translators: Navigating the Currents of Publishing
16:00 – 16:30 Dr. Nefise Kahraman (University of Toronto): From Translation to Readership: Practices and Predicaments of an Independent Publisher in the Canadian Publishing Scene
(Chair: Nicola Wilson)
16:30 -16:45 Break
16:45 -17:45 Keynote 3: Professor Aron Aji (The University of Iowa): Too Late, Too Soon: Translating National Classics for the Present-Time
(Chair: Daniela La Penna)
Speakers
Maureen Freely is a writer, a translator, a professor at the University of Warwick, and the former President of English PEN. She has written eight novels, including four novels set in Istanbul – The Life of the Party, Enlightenment, Sailing through Byzantium, and (most recently) My Blue Peninsula – as well as a translator’s memoir, Angry in Piraeus. Her translations from Turkish include Tezer Özlü’s Cold Nights of Childhood, Sevgi Soysal’s Dawn, Suat Derviş’s In the Shadow of the Yali, Sema Kaygusuz’s The Well of Trapped Words, Tuba Çandar’s Hrant Dink: An Armenian Voice of the Voiceless in Turkey, Fethiye Çetin’s My Grandmother and The Grandchildren, Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book, Snow, Istanbul: Memories and a City, Other Colors: Essays and a Story, Istanbul: Memories and the City, and The Museum of Innocence, and – with Alexander Dawe– Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s The Time Regulation Institute, Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s A Useless Man, and Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat, as well as Hasan Ali Toptaş’s Shadowless and Reckless, with John Angliss. For many years Freely worked as a journalist in London, writing about literature, feminism, social justice, and human rights.
Aron Aji directs the Translation Programs at the University of Iowa. Past president of The American Literary Translators Association, Aji has given workshops and talks nationally and internationally, including France, Turkey, Armenia, Ukraine, and Northern Macedonia, on such topics as translation pedagogy, translation, and global humanities. A native of Turkey, he has translated works by Turkish writers, including three book-length works by Karasu: Death in Troy, The Garden of Departed Cats (2004 National Translation Award), and A Long Day’s Evening (NEA Literature Fellowship, and short-listed for the 2013 PEN Translation Prize). His recent translations include Ferid Edgü’s Wounded Age and Eastern Tales, and Mungan’s Valor (co-translated with David Gramling) (2022 Global Humanities Translation Prize).
Özlem Berk Albachten is currently a British Academy Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading. She is a Professor of Translation Studies at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Her research interests include translation history, intralingual translation, retranslation, Turkish women translators, and autobiography/life writing. She is the author of Translation and Westernisation in Turkey (2004) and Kuramlar Işığında Açıklamalı Çeviribilim Terimcesi (Annotated Translation Terminology, 2005). She co-edited Perspectives on Retranslation. Ideology, Paratexts, Methods (Routledge, 2019), Retranslation in Turkey (Springer, 2019), Routledge Handbook of Intralingual Translation (2024), and the Special issue: Retranslation, Multidisciplinarity and Multimodality for The Translator (2020).
Duygu Tekgül-Akın has a BA in Translation and Interpreting Studies from Boğaziçi University, an MA in Publishing and Language from Oxford Brookes University, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Exeter. She did postdoctoral research at the Linguistics and Language Practice Department of the University of the Free State. Her research interests include the sociology of translation, and Turkish literature in English translation. Her work has appeared in international translation journals. She is currently based at Bahçeşehir University.
Amy Marie Spangler is the co-founder of the Turkish literary agency AnatoliaLit and a translator of several books from Turkish to English, including Aslı Erdoğan’s The City in Crimson Cloak, Mehmet Murat Somer’s The Serenity Murders, Sevgi Soysal’s Noontime in Yenişehir -with Kate Ferguson- Selahattin Demirtaş’s Dawn, -with Nermin Menemencioğlu- Leylâ Erbil’s A Strange Woman, and -with Alev Ersan and Mark David Wyers- Erbil’s What Remains.
Nefise Kahraman is a literary scholar and translator with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. She holds a BA in Translation Studies from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She is one of the founding members of Translation Attached, a Toronto-based independent publishing house dedicated to bringing literature from Turkey to an English-reading audience. She is a lecturer in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto.
For more information, please contact o.berkalbachten@reading.ac.uk.
The image at the top of the page shows a selection of books held in Halide Edib’s library at Istanbul University. Halide Edib’s The Shirt of Flame (1924) and The Clown and His Daughter (1935) were the first Turkish novels appeared in English. Halide Edib (1882-1964) was a Turkish writer, (self-)translator, and a feminist public figure, who became professor of English literature at Istanbul University (1939) and later a member of Parliament (1950-54). Photo credit: Dr. Ekin Öyken.

What’s in a Title: Sir Wydham Deedes, Allen & Unwin, and Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s The Autobiography of a Turkish Girl
2024-02-22 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Özlem Berk Albachten (British Academy Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading)
This research seminar is a hybrid event & is free & open to all

To join us in person come along to Room G08, Chancellor’s Building, University of Reading (Whiteknights campus)
To join via MS Teams, please register here*

(*If the registration form does not open up in your internet browser, clearing your cache may get around this problem. Instructions on how to do this are here. Alternatively, you can try another browser such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. If the problem persists, please email cbcp@reading.ac.uk)

Özlem Berk Albachten’s paper will focus on the first translated Turkish novel in Britain: Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s Çalıkuşu (The Wren, 1923), translated by Sir Wyndham Deedes and published by Allen and Unwin Publishers as The Autobiography of a Turkish Girl in 1949. Based on the correspondence between Sir Deedes and Allen & Unwin between 1945-1949 preserved in the Archive of British Publishers and Printing held at the University of Reading’s Special Collections, the paper will examine the publication process of the novel from pitch to marketing and evaluate the cultural, political, business considerations that shaped the action and decision-making process of “the gate-keepers” that regulated the translation flow from Turkish.
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Özlem Berk Albachten is currently a British Academy Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading, working on a project that examines the dissemination of Turkish literature in translation in the British book market from 1945 to the mid-Seventies through an evaluation of readers’ reports, sale records, and business correspondence with series editors, translators, and professional readers concerning the assessment of translation projects from Turkish, preserved in the Archive of British Printing and Publishing held at the University of Reading’s Special Collections. She is a Professor of Translation Studies at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Her research interests include translation history, intralingual translation, retranslation, Turkish women translators, and autobiography/life writing. She is the author of Translation and Westernisation in Turkey (2004) and Kuramlar Işığında Açıklamalı Çeviribilim Terimcesi (Annotated Translation Terminology, 2005). She co-edited Perspectives on Retranslation. Ideology, Paratexts, Methods (Routledge, 2019), Retranslation in Turkey (Springer, 2019), Routledge Handbook of Intralingual Translation (2024), and the Special issue: Retranslation, Multidisciplinarity and Multimodality for The Translator (2020).

Scouting, Translating, and Publishing Young Adult Literature from Latin America
2024-02-28 17:15 - 18:30
The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing in partnership with Outside in World, the organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children’s books in translation, are delighted to announce the latest event in their seminar series on translation for children:
Speakers: Claire Storey (Translator/ World Kid Lit) and Rosemarie Hudson (HopeRoad Publishing)

This seminar is a hybrid event (in-person & on Zoom) and is free & open to all.

To register for the Zoom link, please click here.
To join us in person, come to Room 104, Palmer Building, University of Reading (Whiteknights campus), RG6 6EW

In 2021, Claire Storey (Translator/ World Kid Lit) applied for funding from Arts Council England for a project focusing on translating and pitching Young Adult literature from Latin America to UK publishers. In this webinar, she will discuss her project, how she identified Latin America as her focus area, how she pitched the project to UK publishers and what she has learned about scouting and pitching along the way.
Claire will be joined by Rosemarie Hudson (HopeRoad Publishing) who will talk about why she set up HopeRoad Publishing in 2010 and how three of the titles from Claire’s project fitted with her publishing objectives: Never Tell Anyone Your Name by Federico Ivanier (Uruguay), The Darkness of Colours by Martín Blasco (Argentina) and The Wild Ones by Antonio Ramos Revillas (Mexico). Rosemarie and Claire will also discuss how their relationship as publisher and translator has grown and been mutually beneficial.
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Claire Storey – translates from German and Spanish into English, specialising in middle grade and young adult literature. In 2021/22, she was awarded funding from Arts Council England for a translation project focusing on Young Adult Literature from Latin America. From 2019-2023, Claire was co-editor of the blog at World Kid Lit and remains involved in the project highlighting translated books for you people. Claire also acts as an international book scout, seeking out and presenting suitable Spanish and German-language books to English-speaking publishers. Claire regularly volunteers in schools talking about careers with languages and was named Outreach Champion 2021 by the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
Jamaican/British Rosemarie Hudson grew up in London and it’s where she founded her first independent publishing company BlackAmber in 1998. Its ethos was to publish unheard voices in English and international languages, and in particular the best writers and writings from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Its aim she’s pursued ever since. She published many authors to critical acclaim during this period including Patricia Cumper; Alex Wheatle; Cauvery Madhavan; Rachel Manley; Yvonne Brewster and Gaston-Paul Effa, before her company was bought out. Often called a ‘trailblazer’,
Rosemarie is a keen and experienced mentor, serving on the board of the Book Trade Charity (BTBS) for six years and mentoring on the Arts Council project, Decibel.
About HopeRoad
In 2010 Rosemarie Hudson founded HopeRoad, the indie publisher which loves to share untold stories around identity, cultural stereotyping and injustice, and specialises in encouraging new talent and promoting the best literary voices from and about Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. HopeRoad’s authors include: Tahar Ben Jelloun; Kamala Markandaya: Cauvery Madhavan; Pete Kalu; Ferdinand Dennis; Yan Ge, Max Lobe; Véronique Tadjo, Igiaba Scego, John Agard and Tony Fairweather to name a few. Rosemarie is also a board member of Inpress Books. She is excited about the future for HopeRoad and very much looking forward to celebrating its forthcoming 15th anniversary.
