The Month of Author's Reading is today the most extensive literary festival in the Czech Republic. Thanks to Ostrava’s candidacy for the title of European Capital of Culture 2015, this year took place in Ostrava in addition to Brno. This year’s festival was dedicated to French literature. For the entire month of July, the Old Arena – a club for culture and information 2015 hosted a constellation of distinguished Czech and French literary figures. The festival was officially opened 1 July 2010 in Ostrava and closed 1 August 2010 in Brno.
The Ostrava 2015 team is working together on preparation of the festival with the Větrné mlýny (Wind Mills) publishing house and the Alliance Française Ostrava, which for almost twenty years has been supporting Czech–French cultural ties. The festival was being held under the auspices of the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Ostrava Petr Kajnar and also the mayor of Brno Roman Onderka in addition to the Czech PEN club represented by its president Jiří Dědeček. In addition to the official organizers and professionals, many enthusiastic volunteers and students were also taking part in festival preparations.
Readings took place daily at the Old Arena in Ostrava as well as at the Goose on a String Theatre (Divadlo Husa na provázku) in Brno. In both cities, a total 31 Czech and 31 French authors will appear. French readings took place at 7 pm and Czech readings at 8:30 pm. The readings by French authors will be accompanied by screen projections of Czech translations. After every reading there was a discussion and book signing by the featured authors.
According the Petr Minařík, the festival’s programme director, this year’s festival was extraordinary thanks to the connection between the Ostrava 2015 project and the Month of Authors’ Reading.
You can find a complete programme festival as well as brief biographies of individual authors at www.autorskecteni.cz.
You can also read reports from The Month of Autor´s Reading written by Jiří Dědeček.
