Kampus Kotba: The 2022 Campus Book Festival – dates and special guest announcement

The National Book Council (NBC) is pleased to announce the return of the Campus Book Festival, to be held once again in-person at the University of Malta Quadrangle between Wednesday 23 and Friday 25 March 2022.

Organised in collaboration with local publishers, University of Malta Departments and student organisations, the Campus Book Festival will be bringing three days of book presentations, thematic discussions, and interviews with the participation of local and international writers and researchers. The full events programme will be published in the coming weeks. 

The Irish writer and winner of the European Prize for Literature Jan Carson will be the this year’s Festival main international guest. Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is the author of the novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, the short story collection, Children’s Children (Liberties Press), two micro-fiction collections, Postcard Stories 1 and 2 (Emma Press) and the short story collection, The Last Resort (Doubleday). Her novel The Fire Starters (Doubleday) won the 2019 EU Prize for Literature for Ireland, the Kitschies Prize for Speculative Fiction 2020 and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Book Prize 2020. Jan won the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition in 2016 and has been shortlisted for the BBC National Story Prize (2020), Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize (2016) and the An Post Irish Short Story of the Year Award (2021). Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022.

The participation of Jan Carson at the Campus Book Festival is co-sponsored by Creative Europe Desk Malta.

At the 2022 Campus Book Festival, Jan Carson will also be joining fellow Maltese EU Prize for Literature winner, Lara Calleja. Calleja is the author of the short story collection Kissirtu Kullimkien (Merlin Publishers, 2020) and Lucy Min? (Merlin Publishers, 2016) and in 2020 was awarded the National Book Prize for Best Emergent Writer. Her first play, ‘Taralalla’, which explores the complex political phenomena behind construction and immigration, opened at Spazju Kreattiv in 2021. In that same year Calleja won the National Book Prize for short stories with Kissirtu Kullimkien.

Twelve exhibitors will be participating at the Campus Book Festival – Horizons, Merlin Publishers, Klabb Kotba Maltin/Midsea Books, Mallia & D’Amato Booksellers, Faraxa Publishing, Kite Group, Marvellous Malta,  L-Għaqda tal-Malti – Università, Malta Libraries, Malta University Press, Inizjamed and Creative Europe Desk Malta – presenting a number of new books and providing students and attendees with special discounts on the occasion of the Festival.

As a space which aims to promote the exchange of ideas between students, academics, writers and publishers, the Campus Book Festival is committed to the participation of different UM Departments and student organisations. This year the Festival features the participation of DESA (Department of English Students’ Association), HoASA (the History of Art and Fine Arts Students’ Association), SPS (Students’ Philosophical Society), and Studenti Graffitti. Also contributing will be the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Maltese, the Department of English, the Department of Translation, Terminology and Interpreting Studies, the Department of Artificial Intelligence, Creative Europe Desk Malta and Inizjamed. The National Book Council would like to thank these entities for their collaboration, as well the University of Malta for its support towards the Festival’s organisation and its promotion.

The full programme of events will be published in the coming weeks. For further information visit ktieb.org.mt and the National Book Council Facebook page.