A Dog Called Cat Meets a Cat wins the public vote in Finlandia competition

While waiting for the winners of the most important literary award of the year to be announced, we are thrilled to share that A Dog Called Cat Meets a Cat written by Tomi Kontio and illustrated by Elina Warsta has been chosen by the public as their favourite among all the nominees in the Finlandia Junior category.

In their comments, the readers have praised, among others, the importance of the topic and “a very touching storytelling”.

It is the fourth time that the Finnish Book Foundation organized public voting for readers’ favourite Finlandia nominee. 

We remind you that A Dog Called Cat Meets a Cat was nominated in the children’s and YA category for the most prestigious literary award, Finlandia Prize. The winner will be announced on the 27th of November.

Congratulations to the authors!

HLA authors on the longlist for the Runeberg Prize

It is the first time in the 33 years history of the award that the longlist is announced, and HLA is proud to see two of its authors on it!

HLA’s authors on the longlist are the Finlandia-winning Pirkko Saisio and her new book Prevarications (Siltala, 2019) and Antti Rönkä and his striking debut novel Off the Ground (Gummerus, 2019).

Runeberg Prize is a prestigeous literary award named after the Finnish national poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg. It is one of the most important literary awards in Finland in addition to the Finlandia Prize. It is worth 10,000 euros and given out yearly in two categories: fiction and children’s books.

The shortlist of 5–8 nominees will be announced on 12th of December, and the winner on the 5th of February, 2020.

Earlier this month it was announced that the hilarious children’s verse book The Life of Fart by Malin Klingenberg & Sanna Mander was nominated for the Runeberg Junior Prize.

Congratulations to the authors and wishing all the best in the competition!

Italian rights of the award-winning The Weather that Changed the World sold in auction to Garzanti

The Italian rights of Marcus Rosenlund’s State Award for Information Publication-winning The Weather that Changed the World have been sold to Garzanti in an auction. 

Garzanti, the publisher of such bestselling authors as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Truman Capote, Tim Marshall, Peter Wohlleben, Michelle Obama and others, will publish Rosenlund’s non-fiction as their Spring 2021 lead title

Garzanti stated the book will be a complementing their list that already has a strong focus on history, nature and climate, and that it will continue to draw focus of the public debate to important current issues linked with our history in a similar way as Tim Marshall has done in his works.

In addition to the Italian deal, The Weather that Changed the World has previously been sold to 4 more territories.

Congratulations to the author!

(Photo of the author by Cata Portin.)

Interviews with writers!

We are continuing our creative literary interviews series with HLA’s writers! Marko Leppänen and Adela Pajunen, the authors of the vivid and touching Woodland, talk about the incredible qualities of forests and share moving real-life cases of nature effects on people. And of course, the entertaining questionnaire! Read the interview here.

(Photos: Petri Asikainen)