A group of Russian publishing professionals are coming to London on Thursday, the 31 of January to discuss Russian contemporary literature with a focus on YA fiction:

By Maria Kozlovskaya Wiltshire

There will be a series of meetings and events at the Free Word Centre organised by English PEN and the British Council as part of a ‘Future Culture’ Literature and Publishing Study Visit to the UK. Ahead of their visit, I was lucky to be able to talk to Ekaterina Kashirskaya, Denis Beznosov and Satenik Anastasian, three prominent Russian publishers, and got a glimpse of what the situation is like with children’s books market in Russia.

More detail about the events — and how to join in — at the PEN website.

The three publishing professionals are:

Ekaterina Kashirskaya, Founder of A Walk Through History

Ekaterina was educated at Moscow State University, received her MSc at the University of Essex (UK) and further training at the European Graduate School of Child Neuropsychology in the Netherlands. Since 2010, she has been the founder and managing director of A Walk Through History publishing house, specialising in primarily non-fiction children’s books. More than 50 unique titles detail various periods of history (world and Russian) and diverse themes have been designed with the help of professional historians and child psychologists.

Denis Beznosov, Head of the Cultural Programmes at the Russian State Children’s Library

Denis manages and coordinates large-scale library projects focused on encouraging reading among children and teenagers. He develops interactive exhibitions, based on works of prominent Russian children’s authors and designed for children implementing innovative technologies. He organises annual cultural events and book fairs at prominent venues in Moscow, including the Moscow International Book Fair and the Red Square Book Festival. He is currently on the steering committee for the upcoming International Congress of IBBY (Moscow 2020). Denis is also a poet and a literary translator.

Satenik Anastasian, Editor-in-Chief of Popcorn Books

Satenik is a graduate of the Moscow State University of Printing Arts. During her publishing career she worked as a senior editor at Rosman (children’s literature), managing editor at UMKA (children’s literature) and managing editor at AST (children’s and YA literature), and has published around 300 titles for children and young adults. In 2018, she launched and became Editor-in-Chief of Popcorn Books as an imprint of Bookmate Digital, and created the first diverse and LGBT+ oriented publishing house in Russia.

What brought you into publishing? What did you want to do that others hadn’t done before?

Ekaterina Kashirskaya: I have a degree in child neuropsychology and had my own practice for many years, so my key interests are how a child’s brain works, as well as memory, speech, thinking process. A lot of parents used to come to me looking for help in improving their children’s learning at school. I worked with each child looking for ways to best apply their talent to their development so that they do better. Meeting a lot of kids helped me understand one simple thing: all children are different! Each child has own specific type of cognitive activity organisation, and each child chooses a way to explore the world which is closer to him/her. Some kids prefer fiction books, others like puzzles and conundrums, and some like table games or other activities but love to play as a family as they don’t like to sit alone reading a book. That’s how I first had the idea to create educational literature which would appeal to children with various learning preferences. So my publishing house A WALK THROUGH HISTORY issues series about every period in history as well as fiction books – adventure stories about children in different historic times, encyclopaedias, interactive books for younger children as well as games. When there are a lot of options for a child to choose from, they can easily find something that would match their ideal way to learn about the subject they are burning with.

Denis Beznosov: A large part of projects I run is cooperation with children’s publishing houses. For instance, our library and particularly my department are responsible for what goes into children’s books stalls at the largest book fairs in Moscow. We also organise publishing events at our library, so we are one of the key platforms in Moscow for the children’s books industry, and because we are a training and methodology centre for all the libraries in Russia, too, (and that’s around 3,500) we also broadcast the new information about the publishing market through these channels. That’s why the main goal of our work is to represent everything that’s important in the Russian publishing market. We also build international partnerships (we work with International Children’s Book Council, as well as with the Biennial Illustration Bratislava, International Federation of Library Associations and others)

Satenik Anastassian: I guess, same as for everyone — love for books and writing was the thing that brought me to publishing. But now, more than ten years later the main thing for me is making books that are underrepresented on the Russian market — LGBT+ books, books about gender equality, mental health issues, body positivity etc. But also books that matter, that are entertaining and life-changing, even in the smallest ways, like making people happy.

What obstacles or problems do you see as particular to the Russian literary ecosystem/book market?

Ekaterina Kashirskaya: An independent publisher has a lot of issues to deal with – a small business is rare and not so typical for today’s Russia. We have neither support from the state, nor any sponsors. It’s hard to survive, to be honest. I don’t think there has been a single completely independent children’s publisher over the last five years. This industry doesn’t get any support for development. In order for another Leo Tolstoy to appear in Russian literature, there needs to be a hundred writers, and then one outstanding writer will emerge. We should publish a lot of literature, which would  be read, reviewed and discussed. But if we don’t publish enough Russian literature, if we don’t organise discussions and talks and attract people’s attention to it, we will never have another Tolstoy, either in adult fiction or in children’s one. It’s even worse with the Russian children’s books market; there are very few good fiction writers, and even fewer educational fiction writers. Those who write this literature aren’t enough to create a market. Well, it simply doesn’t exist. We work in a desert, so to speak, trying our hardest to create good quality books out of nothing. Look at what’s happening at our cultural festivals. In a country with a population of 140 million, the most popular book event gets 30,000 visitors (Non-Fiction book fair). This is ridiculously low compared to similar European events. In Rome, for instance, the independent publishers book fair alone attracts 100,000 visitors. The same with Milan book fair.

Denis Beznosov: The Russian book market is relatively small and quite young, too. This possibly doesn’t pertain to the Russian book market only but to my mind at the moment the Russian book market consists mostly of the large holdings, there aren’t many small independent publishers. It would be healthier for the market if there were more of them. Both large and small publishers produce good books, though. As for the children’s book market, despite constant expectation of the e-book to replace the paper book, the paper book still wins.

Satenik Anastasian: I think the main problem in the Russian publishing industry is self-censorship. This is especially true for LGBT+ books. There is no legislation that prohibits publishing these books but you need to wrap them in plastic and mark them ‘18+’. Still most of the publishers decide to avoid the LGBT+ topic altogether, either out of fear or prejudice.

What about the benefits of the Russian book market?

Ekaterina Kashirskaya: I can’t think of any, apart from the fact that there’s a multitude of people speaking and writing in Russian. But who knows maybe things will change and we’ll see a whole flurry of new authors from those who embark on a writer’s journey today.

Denis Beznosov: I think the advantages are the same as the negative sides – the market is small and young, which means all of its aspects have a lot of potential for development. Take the graphic novel, for instance. It’s a relatively new phenomenon in Russia and it certainly has a future, and there are lots of examples like that.

Satenik Anastasian: I think the main advantage of the market is it being huge and relatively undeveloped in many genres. There is a lot a publisher can do on the market today, if they know how to do it.

Tell us about literary projects you are most proud of?

Denis Beznosov: Every year we produce five large book festivals – two at the library and three within book fairs. We attract between 50 to 110 children’s and educational publishers, and run up to 150 events for children, parents and book specialists. The most significant event is probably The Red Squarefair, our main fair. Our library and my team in particular have been working with this fair for the last five years, from the day it first opened. There are a lot of other projects, too, and I’ll talk about them in more detail at during our visit.

Ekaterina Kashirskaya: Each project we do is unique. We try our best to create good quality children’s non-fiction books, such as our books about history of the world’s underground and railways, books on history of maths, books on football, various historical encyclopaedias and the books about fantastic beasts. You can see more here: https://www.peshkombooks.ru/english/

Satenik Anastasian: I think, most of all I’m proud of Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman that is coming out in the middle of February. Publishing this book is very important for both Russian gay community and the liberals.

If you had a 10 million euro fund to help develop your publishing industry, what would you focus on?

Ekaterina Kashirskaya: I would spend it on spreading the word about our wonderful books to enlarge our readership.

Denis Beznosov: I would spend the money on something that wouldn’t bring much profit but to my mind, is vital: poetry publishing, both classical and contemporary. Aside of my library work, I write poetry, translate it from English and Spanish, I also write reviews, and so to me it’s obvious that if there’s something that needs support, it’s poetry, one of the most beautiful forms of literature. Poetry, due to its small readership, has very little chance to reach larger audiences otherwise.

Satenik Anastasian: I would hire people to scale up what we do now and put a lot of money into marketing and design.

Are there any writers you’d particularly like to publish but something stops you from doing so (if so, what?) If not, tell us about your dream book or what partnership you’d like to start in your business?

Ekaterina Kashirskaya: I’d say it’s not about fulfilling all the plans and projects I’ve ever thought of but more about spreading the word about our work so that more people knew about our books. 

Denis Beznosov: Since I’m not a publisher, I can’t talk about obstacles. As for what I’d personally love to see published, it’d be a series of anthologies (of books by several authors) of contemporary international poetry. It could be bilingual anthologies of Russian poetry issued abroad, it could be Russian editions of contemporary poets (I personally would love to translate Paul Muldoon, Sinead Morrissey, Frank Ormsby). This kind of publications would only be possible with grant support as they obviously won’t bring any profit.

Satenik Anastasian: I would love to publish the Harry Potter series in a way they deserve to be published 🙂 I would also love to publish Matt Haig and Philipp Pullman, but I’m afraid all of them are already taken.