Publishers from all over the world come to BEA, and this year the Polish Cultural Institute New York and the Polish Book Institute are here to market books in English by Polish authors, promote the trans-lation of Polish works, and facilitate trade in international rights between Polish and U.S. publishers.
The Polish Cultural Institute New York was established in 2000 to promote cultural ties between the two countries and has produced a wide range of cultural events in theater, music, film, literature, the humanities, and visual arts, featuring the works of such Polish luminaries as Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda, and Czeslaw Milosz. The Polish Book Institute, established in 2004 in Kraków, to popularize literacy within Poland and to promote Polish literature around the globe. The institute also sponsors a Poland Translation Program, which translates Polish works into foreign languages.
To mark this new effort in the U.S. at BookExpo, Polish author Wilhelm Dichter will read from his autobiographical novels, God’s Horse and The Atheists’ School (Feb. 2012), today at the Uptown Author Stage, 1–1:30 p.m., accompanied by translator Prof. Madeline G. Levine and Northwestern University Press editor Mike Levine. Both books were nominated for Poland’s prestigious Nike prize. Dichter’s work reimagines his family’s traumatic Holocaust experience as well as their postwar struggles living among Poland’s political elite. For more information, come to the Polish Cultural Institute/Polish Book Institute booth (2451).
