Berlin International Literature Festival

The Berlin International Literature Festival (German: internationales literaturfestival berlin) or ilb is an annual event based in Berlin. Every September the festival presents contemporary poetry, prose, nonfiction, graphic novels and international children's and young adult literature. Renown authors present themselves next to new talents within the wide-ranging and political programme. The festival is an event of the "Internationale Peter-Weiss-Stiftung", the founder and festival direktor is Ulrich Schreiber. The 20th edition of the ilb will take place on September 9-19th, 2020.

Logo of the Berlin International Literature Festival

Programme

The festival's programme is classified in its subsections Literatures of the World, Reflections, Specials, International Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Speak, Memory. The section Specials itself is subdivided into the New German Voices, the Slam Revue as well as Scritture Giovani, an international competition for young authors. Every year a Graphic Novel Day during the festival is organised. Since 2002, internationally renowned guest authors of the ilb have visited Berlin prisons, free of charge, for an afternoon or evening during the festival where they read from their books and discuss them with prisoners. Since 2005 there have been annual cooperations with the science year, an initiative by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Since 2019 the ilb cooperates with the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities. Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" at FU Berlin.

At all events of the ilb, texts are presented by the authors in their mother tongue, followed by the reading of the German translation which is done by actors. With presenters and translators available, a discussion between presenter, author and even the audience is made possible.

Every year the ilb is opened in a celebratory event. Opening Speakers have been Petina Gappah (2019), Eva Menasse (2018), Elif Shafak (2017), César Aira (2016), Javier Marías (2015), Pankaj Mishra (2014), Taiye Selasi (2013), Liao Yiwu (2012), Tahar Ben Jelloun (2011), Juan Goytisolo (2010), Arundhati Roy (2009), Nancy Huston (2008), David Grossman (2007), Édouard Glissant (2006), Carlos Fuentes (2005), Antjie Krog (2004), Shashi Tharoor (2003), Dževad Karahasan (2002), Charles Simic (2001).

Guests

Since 2001 more than 2500 authors from more than 120 countries presented their work at the Berlin International Literature Festival, among them Nobel Prize Winners Svetlana Alexievich, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass, Doris Lessing, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gao Xingjian as well as Charles Simic, Han Kang, Juli Zeh, Rebecca Solnit, Monica Ali, Samantha Schweblin, Carla Guelfenbein, Yasmina Reza, Mona Eltahawy, Hanan al-Shaykh, Marie NDiaye, Ozge Samanci, Dacia Maraini, Ljudmila Ulitzkaya, Bernice Chauly, Laksmi Pamuntiak und Antonio Tabucchi.

Sponsorship and Partners

Main sponsors is Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin. Further sponsors are the Federal Foreign Office, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Foundation Jan Michalski and embassies, cultural institutes and publishing houses.

Annual publications
  • Catalogue: The annually-published festival catalogue contains photos, biographies and selected bibliographies of all participating writers.
  • The Berlin Anthology: All authors who participated in the program section 'Literatures of the World' come together and select 99 poems, that will be published in their original language and a German translation.
  • Scritture Giovani: Each year, the ilb publishes five short stories which have been exclusively written for the ilb Scritture Giovani contest according to a specific theme in the languages of the five participating countries (UK, Italy, Norway, Germany and a guest country).

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