Month: January 2024

Saisio will be the first living Finnish author on the world-famous Penguin Modern Classics list. The Penguin pre-empt is the fourth for the trilogy, previously pre-empted in the Netherlands by De Geus, in Germany by Klett-Cotta and in France by Robert Laffont.

Pirkko Saisio, one of the most prominent figures in Finnish literary world but also in theatre and on screen, is quickly becoming also an international phenomenon. In addition to the Dutch, German, French and now the UK and Commonwealth pre-empts, the Helsinki Trilogy has been sold recently also to Czech Republik (Host), Hungary (Polar), and Romania (Pandora M). In the USA and Canada, it is published by Two Lines Press.

Consisting of three Finlandia Prize nominees and one Finlandia Prize winner, the autofictional trilogy has been a classic in Finland since the novels came out: The Lowest Common Multiple in 1998, The Backlight in 2000 and The Red Book of Farewells in 2003.

The trilogy was pre-empted by Casiana Ionita, the publishing director at Penguin Press, and the deal was negotiated by Elianna Kan from Regal Hoffmann & Associates.

First living Finnish author on the Penguin Modern Classics list, Pirkko Saisio will join authors such as Gertrude Stein, Simoine de Beauvoir, Daphne du Maurier, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Fernando Pessoa, Italo Calvino, Saul Bellow, Federico García Lorca, Stanislaw Lem, Franz Kafka, Tennessee Williams, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, George Orwell, Karel Capek and many others.

Penguin Modern Classics was established in 1961, 15 years after the Penguin Classics list. There are two previous Finnish titles on these classics lists: the Finnish national epic Kalevala on the Classics list and Väinö Linna’s Unknown Soldier (original published in 1954) on the Modern Classics list.

Interviewed in The Critic in 2020 by Alexander Larman, the creative editor of the Penguin Classics, Henry Eliot, said that “The Modern Classics series gathers the greatest books of more recent times, books that have challenged convention, changed the world or created something new. They are books that speak powerfully to the moment — and time will tell if they speak for more than that.”

Saisio’s latest novel is Passion (2021) – a color-saturated, Tarkovskian chronicle of Europe. The novel got Saisio her 7th nomination for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, and with the sales of around 30,000 copies so far, it occupied the bestseller list for a good while. Passion will come out in Estonia in May 2024, published by Varrak, and soon also in the Czech Republic, published by Host.

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen, Rival to the Cotton Mill by Ann-Christin Antell, Death Comes for the Dead by Sari Rainio & Juha Rautaheimo and Penelope and the Big Baby Tooth Ballyhoo by Saara Kekäläinen & Reetta Niemensivu are running for the Storytel Awards, in the categories literary fiction, romance, crime, and children’s literature respectively.

Storytel has published its list of nominees for the Storytel Awards, and we love to see several HLA titles making the list: Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen, Rival to the Cotton Mill by Ann-Christin Antell, Death Comes for the Dead by Sari Rainio & Juha Rautaheimo and Penelope and the Big Baby Tooth Ballyhoo by Saara Kekäläinen & Reetta Niemensivu have been nominated in the categories of literary fiction, romance, crime, and children’s literature.

Storytel Awards are given to books in the categories of literary fiction, crime and thriller, romance and feel-good, nonfiction and children’s literature on a yearly basis. The winners are chosen among the nominees by the users’ vote and by a professional jury, and will be announced on March 21st at the Storytel Awards Gala.

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen has been the literary sensation of autumn 2023, mixing science and high-quality literature, and it has so far been sold to 22 territories.

Rival to the Cotton Mill by Ann-Christin Antell is the third installment in the Cotton Mill trilogy. It follows Paula, the head of marketing at her family business the cotton mill, who finds herself in a dilemma when the owner of the rivaling factory, starts to feel less like an enemy and more and more like someone to love. The book has been ranked in the top 10 most listened books on both Bookbeat and Storytel Finland, and the series has sold over 150,000 copies in Finland. The foreign rights have so far been sold for Danish, Dutch, French, Icelandic and Swedish.

Death Comes for the Dead is the second novel in the Mortui Non Silent series by Sari Rainio & Juha Rautaheimo. The shamelessly nostalgic crime series has been received with glowing reviews, and Death Comes for The Dead has been nominated for the Clew of the Year Award given to the best crime novel of the year in 2023.

Penelope and the Big Baby Tooth Ballyhoo is the second volume in the Finlandia-nominated Penelope series by Saara Kekäläinen & Reetta Niemensivu. Penelope is a pocked-sized girl with a very lively imagination, which turns washing her teeth into a hilarious adventure. What will happen when her baby teeth fall off? Maybe she’ll be sent a new sheep instead of new teeth? Or maybe she’ll receive a visit from the tooth fairy’s mischievous cousin, the tooth imp? The reader and Penelope will find out, and it is sure to be a fun ride!

Congratulations to all nominees, and fingers crossed!

Rival to the Cotton Mill by Ann-Christin Antell, The Ribbon Bow by Anu Kaaja and Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen are among the nominees for this year’s Adlibris Award.

Three of the hot titles of last year’s Finnish fiction are now running for another accolade: Rival to the Cotton Mill by Ann-Christin Antell, The Ribbon Bow by Anu Kaaja, and Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen are among the nominees for Adlibris Award in the category of the best novel of the year. The winner for each category is voted by readers on Adlibris.

Adlibris is a large and popular online bookshop founded in Stockholm and active in Sweden, Finland and Norway. The Adlibris Award ails from the company’s native Sweden, where it was established in 2019, and it is being awarded in Finland for the first time this year.

Rival to the Cotton Mill is the third instalment in the Cotton Mill Trilogy by Ann-Christin Antell. The series sold over 140.000 copies in Finland alone, and is a perfect combination of romance, history, entertainment and the fight for workers’ rights. The series starts out in the late 1800s and lands in the Roaring Twenties.

The Ribbon Bow is the fourth novel by award-winning author Anu Kaaja and it is currently nominated for the Runeberg Prize, the second largest and most prestigious award in the country. The novel follows a heartbroken writer who sets out on a European trip in the style of the Grand Tour, visiting museums and enjoying art. The writer’s wanderings bring a fresh, at times irreverent perspective on some of the world’s most famous works of art and is a razor-sharp criticism of capitalism and the objectification of humans at the expense of the humanisation of objects. Everyday objects, like a bow, a coffee cup and a napkin, come to life and engage in conversation, while the human characters are difficult to reach and even harder to let go of.

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen has been the literary sensation of 2023 from Finland, and has so far travelled to 21 language territories. This stunning debut and winner of the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize ties together an extinct sirenian, Steller’s sea cow, and the fates of the humans that tried to put together its skeleton across the centuries. The result is a spellbinding adventure and an enchanting portrayal of a lost creature.

Warmest congratulations to the nominees and the publishers, and fingers crossed!

Helsinki Literary Agency joins Lit-Quest Europe Program with Slovenian Goga and Croatian Sandorf.

We are thrilled to announce that 2024 is starting on a high note for our agency: Helsinki Literary Agency is a part of Lit-Quest Europe, a project supported by EU Creative Europe Program. This exciting project aims at building and improving the skills of literary agents and enables encounters between literary professionals, locally and internationally.

As part of the project, we join forces with publishing houses and literary agencies Goga Publishing (Slovenia) and Sandorf (Croatia) in launching an Open Call for the Literary Professionals Residence Program for 2024.

The Literary Professionals Residence Program for 2024 is open to welcome a total of 9 literary professionals, both literary agents and editors, from all eligible countries. The fellows will participate in a residency either in Novo Mesto (Slovenia), Zagreb (Croatia) or here in Helsinki. Each residency will have a duration of 5 days and will be scheduled between June 1st and November 30th, 2024.

The deadline for applications is February 15th 2024, and the link to the application form can be found here. See below the full open call with more information.

Don’t miss out on this fantastic project, and stay tuned!

Open Call for Literary Professionals Residence Program 2024

The Literary Professionals Residence Program is a part of the Lit-Quest Europe project, which is a cooperative initiative involving Publishing House Goga (Slo), Sandorf (Cro), and Helsinki Literary Agency (Fi). The Lit-Quest Europe project receives support from the EU Creative Europe program.

The Literary Professionals Residence Program for 2024 is open to welcome literary agents and editors from all eligible countries within the EACEA program:

EU Countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
Non-EU Countries: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

The program particularly emphasizes literary professionals who possess extensive experience in their field, are accustomed to delivering lectures, and are proficient in the English language. We aim to enable the participation of literary professionals of all ages and genders, with a common criterion: their knowledge will have a meaningful impact on the countries of their residence. For the year 2024, the call for applications is open for 9 literary professionals. Each residency will have a duration of 5 days, scheduled between June 1st and November 30th, 2024.

Number of Residencies:
• Goga Publishing (Slovenia – Novo mesto): 3 residencies
• Sandorf (Croatia – Zagreb): 3 residencies
• Helsinki Literary Agency (Finland – Helsinki): 3 residencies

The fellowship for literary professionals will include:
• A 5-night stay in an apartment
• Travel costs (up to 500 EUR)
• Accommodation costs (up to 150 EUR per night)
• Subsistence costs (50 EUR per person)
• Lecture Fee (300 EUR)
• Selected literary professionals will be required to complete a questionnaire provided by
literary agents who are also part of this project.
• Lectures will be recorded and disseminated on the project page.
• All literary professionals will have the opportunity to meet local literary professionals of the host country and other individuals from the publishing field.

The application should include:
• A concise Curriculum Vitae
• Full contact information (phone number and email address)
• Information about the field of profession
• Photograph (for promotional purposes)
• Consent statement regarding the recording of the lecture
All application materials should be submitted in English. The application deadline is February 15th 2024.

The selection will be conducted by the Board of the Lit-Quest Europe Project.
For additional questions regarding the call, please contact via email: lit-quest@goga.si.
Applicants will be notified of the jury’s decision via email by Thursday, February 22th, 2024.

You can find the application on the following link: https://forms.gle/ainK6og4nGgmK9mE8

Beasts of the Sea, the wildly successful debut of author Iida Turpeinen, continues to stun the international publishing scene. The title is now travelling to Japan and the Arabic world, marking 22 language territories.

Stunning news for our fiction list: Beasts of the Sea, the literary sensation from Finland of 2023 by author Iida Turpeinen, continues to enchant publishers all over the world. The rights have now been acquired for both Japanese and World Arabic, marking 22 language territories for this title.

The Japanese rights have been acquired by Kawade Shobo Shinsha, one of Japan’s leading publishers of books, in a deal brought to us by Tuttle Mori Literary Agency. Kawade Shobo Shinsha have over a century of experience in the publishing industry, having started in 1886. They have since then been the home of domestic bestsellers like Amy Yamada’s “Bed Time-Eyes” (1985) and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Memorial Day”(1987) and of international authors of high profile like Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Vladmir Nabokov, and Desmond Morris, among others.

The World Arabic rights have been acquired by Al Arabi, an Egypt-based publishing house that is the home to a wide range of international authors, from Frantz Kafka, Peter Handke and Herman Koch to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Jon Gnarr and many others, including fellow Finnish authors Sofi Oksanen and Juhani Karila.

Beasts of the Sea is a spellbinding story of long-gone species and human destinies where an unknown sirenian is discovered by biologist Georg Vilhelm Steller, who plans on bringing its skeleton to Europe to study it, until fate gets in the way: Steller dies before succeeding, and the sea cow goes extinct in a mere couple of decades due to human greed. Thus begins the quest for the skeleton of this lost creature, in an attempt to bring back what mankind has destroyed.

Beasts of the Sea has enchanted readers and critics in Finland, where it also won the Helsingin Sanomat literary prize for the best debut last autumn, and publishers everywhere, receiving extensive attention and media coverage even internationally.

Author Iida Turpeinen (b. 1987) is a Helsinki-based literary scholar currently writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature.

Warmest congratulations to the author and the publishers!