Book Fairs and Festivals

U.K. Hay and Wye Festival

We were busy working away at the Hay on Wye Book Festival in Hay U.K. (27th May to 5th June 2005) promoting the Book Campaign to the tens of thousands of authors, publishers and members of the public who descend on Hay once a year for a feast of literary talks, films and workshops.

A total of 55 authors signed our special pledge book - a giant Victorian scrapbook - to show their support for the campaign. Signatories include Children's Laureate Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Stephen Fry, Philip Pullman, Audrey Niffenegger, Jon Snow, Julian Clary, Meg Rosoff, Monty and Sarah Don and 'horse whisperer' Monty Roberts.

Madrid Book Festival

We took part in the Madrid's book festival held from May 27th to June 12th, 2005. We brought with us famous authors from the past into the present to tell the public and publishers that it's not necessary to destroy forests any longer to make books. We dressed up as Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, Rosalía de Castro, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Francisco de Quevedo, and walked through the bookfair handing out factsheets and talking to the public about how printing books on ancient forest friendly paper can help save ancient forests. These figures from the past had quite an impact on the public and many to took to heart the need to support books printed on ancient forest friendly paper.

We also held a conference at the festival with famous Spanish author Javier Moro to encourage publishers to commit to printing books on ancient forest friendly paper.

Turin Book Festival, Italy

At the Turin Book Festival (May 5th to 9th 2005) we were invited to present new books that have been printed on 'Ancient Forest Friendly' paper. One of the new books was by author Camilla Baresani called "L'imperfezione dell'amore" (Bompiani/Rcs).

Some children reminded the festival attendees of some of the animals that might be saved if more books and paper products are on printed on recycled paper. They wore reindeer and bird of paradise face masks during in the presentation to introduce a new children's book "Gli Invisibili e l'enigma di Gaia" by Giovanni Del Ponte (Sperling&Kupfer) which is printed on 100 percent recycled paper.

Famous Italian author Andrea De Carlo also participated in the presentation in which he spoke passionately about the importance of ancient forests and ancient forest friendly books - click here to read more about De Carlo's commitment to ancient forests and the book campaign.

Leipzig Book Fair, Germany

We ran a workshop at the Leipzig book fair on how to make recycled paper as part of our effort to profile the book campaign. By watching how pulp is turned into paper the visitors to our stand realised how unnecessary and tragic it is to pulp ancient forests for paper when recycled pulp works just as well.

2000 people signed protest postcards asking the Finnish government's logging company Metsahallitus to protect the Finnish ancient forests instead of using them to make paper

We also took part in various workshops at the fair helping to highlight publishers' responsibility to play their part in saving ancient forests and use recycled and FSC paper to print their books on.

Het Andere Boek, Belgium

We attended the " Het Andere Boek " festival in the beginning of October 2004 in Antwerp. At the festival they announced that over 50 Flemish authors committed their support for the campaign and will try to get their publisher to print their next book on ancient forest friendly paper. There are now over 70 Flemish authors that support the campaign.