I know many of you had a stormy and somewhat soggy New Year and this publisher was no exception. I nearly did a Mary Poppins when trying to build my stall on Portobello market on the first Saturday of 2014. However I succeeded to hang on to the stall, my wellies kept out the water from the mini floods in the gutter and books flew into the hands of satisfied customers. The lengths a publisher goes through to sell books but it was more than worth it.

Actually 2013 went out with a bang as well, because just before Christmas we heard that Karen Jenning’s Finding Soutbek has been long listed for Inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature!

Administered from Nigeria, this new literature prize, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, is the first ever pan-African prize celebrating first time writers of published fiction books. The prize aims to serve as a platform for the discovery of new creative talent out of Africa.

A few fascinating literary storms are on the horizon for 2014. The first of which is Diaspo/Renga, a poetic conversation by Marilyn Hacker and Deema Shehabi. Triggered by the Israeli siege of Gaza, and compiled between 2009 and 2012, award-winning Jewish-American poet Marilyn Hacker and Palestinian-American poet Deema K. Shehabi responded to each other’s poem, directly or obliquely thanks to electronic communication. More information will follow shortly on our book & author pages.

During 2014 we will continue with our serialisation of Axel Graafland’s adventures written by Pieter Thomassen. Quite uniquely the instalments are published every fortnight in Dutch and English. Read the 6th instalment, the first in 2014.

Several other exciting project are taking shape and include a brand new poetry collection by Arnold Jansen op de Haar, Meedogenloos Liefhebben ‘ Loving Mercilessly. Follow this blog for more developments.

After finishing off 2013 with a lovely end of year party, have you seen the pictures? We continue with another set of exciting events in 2014. The first of which is the awards ceremony for the What’s your Place? poetry competition on Friday 28 February. A perfect occasion to spot new talent.

Finally I’m very excited to be chairing a seminar on 8 April, 10am, at the London Book Fair, discussing Editing, Indexing and Translating – the added-value activities behind publishing. Issues close to our hearts, so please put this date in your diary.

By the way do you know that you can read all the columns published since October 2009 on our website? Just check the Complete List of Columns article in any of our magazines.

I wish you a very good reading year!