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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 FEBRUARY 2022 4 BOOKS Jan Carson is special guest for 2022 Campus Book Festival THE National Book Council (NBC) is pleased to announce the return of the Campus Book Festival, to be held once again in-person at the University of Malta Quadrangle between Wednesday 23 and Friday 25 March 2022. Organised in collaboration with local publishers, Uni- versity of Malta Departments and student organisations, the Campus Book Festival will be bringing three days of book presentations, thematic discus- sions, and interviews with the participation of local and inter- national writers and research- ers. The full events programme will be published in the coming weeks. The Irish writer and winner of the European Prize for Litera- ture Jan Carson will be the this year's Festival main interna- tional guest. Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast, Northern Ire- land. She is the author of the novel, Malcolm Orange Dis- appears, the short story collec- tion, Children's Children (Lib- erties Press), two micro-fiction collections, Postcard Stories 1 and 2 (Emma Press) and the short story collection, The Last Resort (Doubleday). Her novel The Fire Starters (Dou- bleday) won the 2019 EU Prize for Literature for Ireland, the Kitschies Prize for Speculative Fiction 2020 and was shortlist- ed for the Dalkey Book Prize 2020. Jan won the Harper's Ba- zaar short story competition in 2016 and has been shortlist- ed for the BBC National Story Prize (2020), Sean O'Faolain Short Story Prize (2016) and the An Post Irish Short Story of the Year Award (2021). Jan's latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in ear- ly 2022. At the 2022 Campus Book Festival, Jan Carson will also be joining fellow Maltese EU Prize for Literature winner, Lara Calleja. Calleja is the au- thor of the short story collec- tion Kissirtu Kullimkien (Mer- lin Publishers, 2020) and Lucy Min? (Merlin Publishers, 2016) and in 2020 was awarded the National Book Prize for Best Emergent Writer. Her first play, 'Taralalla', which explores the complex political phenom- ena behind construction and immigration, opened at Spazju Kreattiv in 2021. In that same year Calleja won the Nation- al Book Prize for short stories with Kissirtu Kullimkien. Ten local publishers, book- sellers and public entities will be participating at the Cam- pus Book Festival - Horizons, Merlin Publishers, Klabb Kot- ba Maltin/Midsea Books, Mall- ia & D'Amato Booksellers, Faraxa Publishing, Kite Group, Marvellous Malta, L-Għaqda tal-Malti - Università, Malta Libraries, and the Malta Uni- versity Press - presenting a number of new books and pro- viding students and attendees with special discounts on the occasion of the Festival. As a space which aims to promote the exchange of ide- as between students, academ- ics, writers and publishers, the Campus Book Festival is com- mitted to the participation of different UM Departments and student organisations. This year the Festival features the participation of DESA (De- partment of English Students' Association), HoASA (the His- tory of Art and Fine Arts Stu- dents' Association), and SPS (Students' Philosophical Soci- ety). Also contributing will be the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Maltese, the Department of English, Cre- ative Europe Desk Malta and Inizjamed. The National Book Council would like to thank these entities for their collabo- ration, as well the University of Malta for its support towards the Festival's organisation and its promotion. The full programme of events will be published in the coming weeks. For further details visit ktieb.org. mt or the National Book Council's Facebook page. The Irish writer and winner of the European Prize for Literature Jan Carson