events

This year once again we’ll have an internet radio station! From 9.00 am to 12.00, on the respective days of the festival: Zuzanna Kowalczyk i Natalia Prüfer („Pismo”/ Buch, czyli książka), Michał Nogaś (Agora/Radio Nowy Świat), Łukasz Wojtusik (RMF Classic/Alfabet Wojtusika) oraz Weronika Wawrzkowicz (Radio Nowy Świat / Rozmawiam, bo lubię). You can listen to us live at www.literackisopot.pl and as podcasts on Spotify Goyki 3 on air. We will talk about literature, read excerpts from literary works, play lots of good music, and more!

This year once again we’ll have an internet radio station! From 9.00 am to 12.00, on the respective days of the festival: Zuzanna Kowalczyk i Natalia Prüfer („Pismo”/ Buch, czyli książka), Michał Nogaś (Agora/Radio Nowy Świat), Łukasz Wojtusik (RMF Classic/Alfabet Wojtusika) oraz Weronika Wawrzkowicz (Radio Nowy Świat / Rozmawiam, bo lubię). You can listen to us live at www.literackisopot.pl and as podcasts on Spotify Goyki 3 on air. We will talk about literature, read excerpts from literary works, play lots of good music, and more!

This year once again we’ll have an internet radio station! From 9.00 am to 12.00, on the respective days of the festival: Zuzanna Kowalczyk i Natalia Prüfer („Pismo”/ Buch, czyli książka), Michał Nogaś (Agora/Radio Nowy Świat), Łukasz Wojtusik (RMF Classic/Alfabet Wojtusika) oraz Weronika Wawrzkowicz (Radio Nowy Świat / Rozmawiam, bo lubię). You can listen to us live at www.literackisopot.pl and as podcasts on Spotify Goyki 3 on air. We will talk about literature, read excerpts from literary works, play lots of good music, and more!

This year once again we’ll have an internet radio station! From 9.00 am to 12.00, on the respective days of the festival: Zuzanna Kowalczyk i Natalia Prüfer („Pismo”/ Buch, czyli książka), Michał Nogaś (Agora/Radio Nowy Świat), Łukasz Wojtusik (RMF Classic/Alfabet Wojtusika) oraz Weronika Wawrzkowicz (Radio Nowy Świat / Rozmawiam, bo lubię). You can listen to us live at www.literackisopot.pl and as podcasts on Spotify Goyki 3 on air. We will talk about literature, read excerpts from literary works, play lots of good music, and more!

Presentation of work by artist duo Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went at Goyki 3 Art Incubator exhibition room. The work depicts piled up layers of black paper with fading black text, unknown titles by unknown authors, charred remains of burnt books and documents found by chance on a site of a fire in Krems, Austria.

Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went have been working together since they were students, creating, in particular, photographs, installations, objects and drawings. They capture unnoticed, overlooked and forgotten things and phenomena and turn our attention towards them.

Presentation of work by artist duo Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went at Goyki 3 Art Incubator exhibition room. The work depicts piled up layers of black paper with fading black text, unknown titles by unknown authors, charred remains of burnt books and documents found by chance on a site of a fire in Krems, Austria.

Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went have been working together since they were students, creating, in particular, photographs, installations, objects and drawings. They capture unnoticed, overlooked and forgotten things and phenomena and turn our attention towards them.

Presentation of work by artist duo Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went at Goyki 3 Art Incubator exhibition room. The work depicts piled up layers of black paper with fading black text, unknown titles by unknown authors, charred remains of burnt books and documents found by chance on a site of a fire in Krems, Austria.

Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went have been working together since they were students, creating, in particular, photographs, installations, objects and drawings. They capture unnoticed, overlooked and forgotten things and phenomena and turn our attention towards them.

Presentation of work by artist duo Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went at Goyki 3 Art Incubator exhibition room. The work depicts piled up layers of black paper with fading black text, unknown titles by unknown authors, charred remains of burnt books and documents found by chance on a site of a fire in Krems, Austria.

Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went have been working together since they were students, creating, in particular, photographs, installations, objects and drawings. They capture unnoticed, overlooked and forgotten things and phenomena and turn our attention towards them.

• Goyki 3 Art Inkubator
• Biblioteka Sopocka / Muzeum Sopotu
• Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne
• Grupa Wydawnicza Foksal
• Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury
• Świadomi Wydawcy
• Wydawnictwo Afera
• Wydawnictwo Agora
• Wydawnictwo Akapit Press
• Wydawnictwo ALBUS
• Wydawnictwo Amaltea
• Wydawnictwo Buka
• Wydawnictwo Bosz
• Wydawnictwo Centrala – Mądre komiksy
• Wydawnictwo Copernicus Center Press
• Wydawnictwo Czarne
• Wydawnictwo CzuCzu
• Wydawnictwo Druganoga
• Wydawnictwo Debit
• Wydawnictwo Drzazgi
• Wydawnictwo Dwie Siostry
• Wydawnictwo Format
• Wydawnictwo Internetowa Kraina Książek
• Wydawnictwo Kameleon
• Wydawnictwo Karakter
• Wydawnictwo Książkowe Klimaty
• Wydawnictwo Kropka
• Wydawnictwo Krytyka Polityczna
• Wydawnictwo Literackie
• Wydawnictwo Marginesy
• Wydawnictwo Marpress
• Wydawnictwo Noir sur Blanc
• Wydawnictwo Pauza
• Wydawnictwo Poznańskie
• Wydawnictwo Relacja
• Wydawnictwo Smak Słowa
• Wydawnictwo Sonia Draga
• Wydawnictwo Słowo/obraz terytoria
• Wydawnictwo TAKO
• Wydawnictwo Terra Librorum
• Wydawnictwo timof comics
• Wydawnictwo Tu się czyta
• Wydawnictwo Wielka Litera
• Wydawnictwo Znak

The Foundation Bus of Institute of Positive Education (Instytut Edukacji Pozytywnej). For the first time we are at Literacki Sopot, a place which is dedicated to excellent literature and is also full of emotions. We invite everyone willing to seek psychological advice and use our mobile mental health service to the Foundation’s booth, or rather to our full of power minibus (thanks to the donator, Volkswagen). Free publications will be available as well. We invite teenagers, parents, everyone who is interested in our efforts for changes in education. The Foundation Instytut Edukacji Pozytywnej has been working toward changes in education since 2014. We have been operating with all our strength since 2014 and believing that learning in a modern way and a changing the approach toward education is possible. Every child, teenager, and adult can be developing in a creative way, which is tailored to his needs and capabilities. The areas of our work include: mental health, mediation in education, non-violent communication, e-education, ecology, upbringing and entrepreneurship. We implement a number of long-term projects, including: Development Program for Clinics (Program Rozwojowy dla Poradni), School of Positive Thinking (Szkoła Myślenia Pozytywnego), Mental Health Centre (Poradnia Zdrowia Psychicznego), Mediations (Mediacje) and Non-violent communication (Komunikacja bez przemocy). We operate locally but also nationwide, responding to current events and needs. We cooperate with institutions as well as businesses. More information about us: https://instytutep.pl/zmieniaj-edukacje/

The Foundation Bus of Institute of Positive Education (Instytut Edukacji Pozytywnej). For the first time we are at Literacki Sopot, a place which is dedicated to excellent literature and is also full of emotions. We invite everyone willing to seek psychological advice and use our mobile mental health service to the Foundation’s booth, or rather to our full of power minibus (thanks to the donator, Volkswagen). Free publications will be available as well. We invite teenagers, parents, everyone who is interested in our efforts for changes in education. The Foundation Instytut Edukacji Pozytywnej has been working toward changes in education since 2014. We have been operating with all our strength since 2014 and believing that learning in a modern way and a changing the approach toward education is possible. Every child, teenager, and adult can be developing in a creative way, which is tailored to his needs and capabilities. The areas of our work include: mental health, mediation in education, non-violent communication, e-education, ecology, upbringing and entrepreneurship. We implement a number of long-term projects, including: Development Program for Clinics (Program Rozwojowy dla Poradni), School of Positive Thinking (Szkoła Myślenia Pozytywnego), Mental Health Centre (Poradnia Zdrowia Psychicznego), Mediations (Mediacje) and Non-violent communication (Komunikacja bez przemocy). We operate locally but also nationwide, responding to current events and needs. We cooperate with institutions as well as businesses. More information about us: https://instytutep.pl/zmieniaj-edukacje/

Listening to Polish texts read by people who do not speak Polish is not easy. At first we don't understand what the language is about or even what is meant. Then you laugh at all the slip-ups in language, pronunciation problems, strange sounds. They are funny until we start to understand that it is our mother tongue. And the texts we read with such difficulty are the Holocaust jokes available on the Internet.

Listening to Polish texts read by people who do not speak Polish is not easy. At first we don't understand what the language is about or even what is meant. Then you laugh at all the slip-ups in language, pronunciation problems, strange sounds. They are funny until we start to understand that it is our mother tongue. And the texts we read with such difficulty are the Holocaust jokes available on the Internet.

Cast: Justyna Bartoszewicz, Sylwia Góra, Maciej Konopiński, Jan Napieralski, Robert Ninkiewicz, Magdalena Smuk

In Ferdinand von Schirach's intimate drama Terror, the author asks himself and us viewers about the price of our freedom and security. We are faced with the dilemma of whether to save the 164 passengers of a terrorist-hijacked plane or, by shooting it down, to avoid the deaths of the people gathered in the stadium targeted by the terrorist. The play's interactive ending engages the audience, putting them in the role of the jury.

Głosy szumiącego potoku is a radio play created especially for the Sopot by the Book festival. A gripping tale of the tragic fate of Sopot residents inspired by the authentic, mysterious events that took place in the house at 3 Goyki Street in the 1930s and 1940s. However, Piotr Skotnicki (author, director and composer), not wanting to limit himself only to confirmed facts, created a certain kind of his own alternative vision of history, which theoretically could have taken place. The radio play was produced in the convention of radio theatre, with the participation of an excellent cast of actors. The original music is accompanied by the sounds of the Sopot resort, including this mysterious house, recorded especially for the performance.

ELSE - Karolina Gruszka
STEFAN - Włodzimierz Press
IRINE - Monika Obara
HANS -  Wojciech Zieliński
ZUZA - Karolina Michalik
VITTORIO - Krzysztof Szczepaniak
KOMISARZ - Tomasz Borkowski
JAN -  Wojciech Żołądkowicz
SAŁDAT - Paweł Paprocki
TADEUSZ  - Łukasz Borkowski
MILICJANT - Bartosz Obuchowicz
KELNER - Dominik Piotrowski
STASIO - Antoni Domin
HEINRICH -  Jakub Strach
JADZIA - Antonina Pach-Żbikowska
KRUPIER - Robert Czebotara  

A conversation with Professor Kalina Wojciechowska, a theologian and evangelical biblical scholar, about how the way we read and understand the Bible is changing as our knowledge of the culture in which it was written and the literature with which it came into contact expands.

Głosy szumiącego potoku is a radio play created especially for the Sopot by the Book festival. A gripping tale of the tragic fate of Sopot residents inspired by the authentic, mysterious events that took place in the house at 3 Goyki Street in the 1930s and 1940s. However, Piotr Skotnicki (author, director and composer), not wanting to limit himself only to confirmed facts, created a certain kind of his own alternative vision of history, which theoretically could have taken place. The radio play was produced in the convention of radio theatre, with the participation of an excellent cast of actors. The original music is accompanied by the sounds of the Sopot resort, including this mysterious house, recorded especially for the performance.

ELSE - Karolina Gruszka
STEFAN - Włodzimierz Press
IRINE - Monika Obara
HANS -  Wojciech Zieliński
ZUZA - Karolina Michalik
VITTORIO - Krzysztof Szczepaniak
KOMISARZ - Tomasz Borkowski
JAN -  Wojciech Żołądkowicz
SAŁDAT - Paweł Paprocki
TADEUSZ  - Łukasz Borkowski
MILICJANT - Bartosz Obuchowicz
KELNER - Dominik Piotrowski
STASIO - Antoni Domin
HEINRICH -  Jakub Strach
JADZIA - Antonina Pach-Żbikowska
KRUPIER - Robert Czebotara  

After the play we invite you for the meeting with director.

Poland and Germany have led one of the most exemplary reconciliation processes in the world. From the memorable phrase ‘we forgive and ask forgiveness’ from the letter of the Polish bishops to the German bishops and the meeting between Helmut Kohl and Tadeusz Mazowiecki in Krzyżowa, through support for German reunification, to joint scientific, educational and cultural programmes, to the establishment of historical institutes in Berlin and Warsaw and an unprecedented number of literary translations into Polish and German. More than half a century ago, the Joint Polish-German Textbook Committee for Historians and Geographers was also established under the auspices of UNESCO. After decades of consultations and agreements, a history textbook was in the making for twelve years - the second history textbook in the world edited taking into account two perspectives after the Franco-German one. The symbolic four volumes were written with the awareness that there was no alternative: either we build a future together, or that future will simply not exist. All these initiatives offered hope for dialogue and mutual understanding without simultaneously justifying wrongs. This kind of agreement has proved as fragile as the ice on the Oder during the increasingly warm winters. Politicians on both sides ensured that acts of resentment and aggressive narrative were institutionally condoned. First, the claims of the Federation of Expellees and then, the insistence on reparations for war damage led to the strengthening of mutual resentment. And although it was possible to heal the wounds of a large part of the representatives of the older generation, who still remember the war, for many young people the confrontation with the German neighbour became a way of venting their aggression and finding a figure which history calls a scapegoat. In this situation it is worth asking ourselves whether a dialogical negotiation of memory between Poland and Germany is still possible at all? Is it possible to abandon simplistic national myths and base relations with neighbours on mutual listening and the conviction that the truth of one is not necessarily compatible with the truth of the other? These questions will resonate particularly strongly in Sopot, halfway between the cultural landscape of the former German Danzig and Polish Gdynia. In this architectural diversity, between the sloping roofs and brick facades of Gdańsk and the flat coverings of Gdynia's modernist buildings, a symbolic mirror of memory can be set up. One glance is enough to see that the polyphony of architecture is a symbolic evidence of the polyphony of memory. This coexistence is possible, it is just worth accepting it. Dr Susann Worschech from the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Prof. Kornelia Ćwiklak, a literary scholar from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Pedagogy at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and Prof. Robert Traba, a historian and professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, will speak about the Polish-German neighbourhood.

SAVVY Contemporary situates itself at the threshold of notions and constructs of the West and non-West, primarily to understand and negotiate between, and obviously to deconstruct the ideologies and connotations eminent to such constructs.

SAVVY Contemporary is known as a major platform for innovative exhibition programs, symposiums, performances, and other related arts in the international as well as local context and has established itself and an interdisciplinary space, which presents side by side well-known names international art scene- with team members from 12 countries and 5 continents trained as biotechnologists, art historians, cultural theorists, anthropologists, designers, and artists.

The project initiated by Goyki 3 and co-created with Colonial Neighbours – pillar of SAVVY Contemporary – will introduce a method of researching colonial German history through an archival practice focused on the quotidian, personal and banal objects – volatile carriers of memories, which testify to a continuous presence of the colonial past within the lived reality of everyday. For the occasion of Sopot by the Book festival attendees and visitors of Goyki 3 will be invited to participate in two activities: open presentation and a workshop titled Colonial Neighbours – A tale of toxic archives and its multilimbed bodies. The presentation will introduce a variety of SAVVY Contemporary practices, while the workshop will be an invitation for the audience to engage with one of them – a practice of participatory archiving of colonial history.

Directed by: Lukas Dhont, Belgium, France, Netherlands 2022, 104 min.

The intense friendship between two thirteen-year old boys Léo and Rémi suddenly gets disrupted. Struggling to understand what has happened, Léo approaches Sophie, Rémi's mother. Close is a beautiful study of friendship and responsibility. It is a second feature film of Belgian film director and screenwriter Lukas Dhont. It premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where he shared the Grand Prix with Claire Denis' Stars at Noon. On 27 June it was announced as the winner of the 2023 LUX Audience Award. The LUX Audience Award is an annual project of the European Parliament and the European Film Academy, in partnership with the European Commission and Europa Cinemas.

This title is rooted in the experience of racism and anti-Semitism. Breath. ‘I can't breathe’ are the words of George Floyd, a black American murdered by white police officers. This is in the USA. Doesn't it apply to us? Maxwell Itoya, a black Polish Nigerian, was killed in 2010 during a police intervention. He lost his breath and his life. Don't call me ‘Negro’, a thing about Polish language and customs straight from the novel In Desert and Wilderness by Henryk Sienkiewicz. There is also the Polish-Belarusian border. Does systemic racism not apply to us?

Sight? We are sometimes affected by blindness. There is a connection between the effigy of a Jew burnt in the market square in Wrocław, the laws prohibiting the truth that we have also happend to be executioners, and what is going on at the Polish-Belarusian border. People are still dying there, and most of us are failing our maturity exam. Meanwhile, words about racist segregation are being removed from a plaque at Warsaw University recalling the 1937 ghetto benches.

The words ‘racism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’ are shielded by a suffocating, reluctant silence. It is time to regain both breath and sight. Offering knowledge, restoring matzevahs, being supported by literature - maybe this is the way to deal with racism and anti-Semitism around and within us. Maybe this is the way to bring down the walls that are real, the ones at the border, and those built in our hearts against our neighbours?

So what are racism and anti-Semitism in their essence? Race does not exist, but racism is real. Jewish Poles have mostly been exterminated, but anti-Semitism, its hiccups and recurrences are present. Is it only in Poland or also in Germany? What do the two phenomena have in common and what is different? How different are its manifestations and the way they are understood in Germany and Poland?

Germans seem to be aware. Through the memory of the crimes of the world wars, German society has been sensitised to their evils and dangers. But is this really the case? Is it possible to get rid of the virus of resentment, fear, the temptation to dehumanise the ‘other’ once and for all? And if so, how is it done? If not, what needs to be sensitised to counteract this? Do Germans have an equally strong awareness of their colonial past?

How can we talk about racism in Poland, a country of white people, which does not see the fate of the Romani, black Poles, Lemkos, Kashubians, Silesians and Tatars? Racism is not our problem, because we did not have colonies and slave markets, but is serfdom something else after all? Was it us who were attacked, was it us who had our freedom taken away? So how do we deal with our own prejudices? Do we associate them with anti-Semitism, with racism? How can the memory of the past - the one taken from the matzevahs restored by community activists - bring knowledge and sensitivity back into the urban space like people stoppers do?

What role (last but not least), revealing the heart of darkness rooted in and within us, does fiction play? Can it restore vision and thereby foster in us a disagreement with racism and anti-Semitism? How is this done in Germany? How is it done in Poland? For we need individual and systemic dissent. And this individual dissent must reach a critical mass in order to oppose the systemic dissent as it pushes forward and persists.

The discussion will be attended by Prof. Michał Bilewicz from the Centre for Research on Prejudice at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw, Agnieszka Jabłońska from the Urban Memory Foundation in Wrocław and Prof. Andreas Zick, Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Universität Bielefeld, and the meeting will be hosted by Monika Płatek, lawyer and lecturer at the University of Warsaw.

Kӓthe Kollwitz (1867‒1945) was a German printmaker and sculptor associated with the expressionist movement. She was the first woman admitted as a member of the Prussian Royal Academy of Arts and the most important German printmaker of the 20^th century. A socialist, feminist (she founded the Association of Women Artists in Berlin in 1913) and pacifist. She made war, hatred, poverty, love, sadness, death and struggle the main themes of her mature work.

As part of the series, we plan to present the profiles of great Polish and foreign women painters and bring their achievements closer to a wider audience. Women in art are still not given enough prominence, and indeed are often erased from it. Little has changed since the founding of the British Royal Academy in 1768, which did include two female painters, Angelika Kauffman and Mary Moser, but neither one of them is in the collective portrait of the members of the Royal Academy by Johann Zoffany alongside the other founding members. Their images are found in portraits hanging on the wall behind the models' podium, but this makes them objects of art rather than its creators. Further women were not admitted to the Academy until 1922. The exclusion to which female artists have been subjected for centuries has caused art to be perceived from a male perspective. In this mini-series, we want to restore the importance and rightful place of talented women who are still little known and unrecognised due to social prejudices.

Xhafer is from Kosovo, works for a pharmaceutical company, his wife, Nora is German and has recently become a third-time mother. She is trying to write her PhD thesis and return to university life between one breastfeeding and the next. She cannot count on her parents' help, as they do not accept her husband, a foreigner from Eastern Europe. Xhafer experiences the resentment of his in-laws every time he meets them and this feeling translates into his relationships with others, especially his colleagues at work. He believes that he was deliberately removed from the mailing list for a new project, another time someone mislead him so that he could not present a prepared paper, someone else blocked his access to research data. All these instances are evidence of bullying, the cause of which, he believes, is his parentage. One day, when he finds a dead rat on the gate of his house, he decides to act.

The brilliant film by Visar Morina, who, like his protagonist, comes from Kosovo, is a story about the experience of immigration and the feelings that usually accompany it: loss, rejection, insecurity, lack of social acceptance or alienation. Xhafer is the opposite of a typical immigrant - he has achieved success and become an assimilated member of his new society. However, negative emotions still accompany him in his daily life. The filmmakers pose the important question of to what extent successful integration depends on the conditions created by a country's social policy and to what extent on the subjective feelings and sensitivity of the immigrant.

A mesmerising crime ballad about an illegal African immigrant who cuts through the successive circles of the German capital's criminal underworld. Berlin Alexanderplatz is a spectacular return to Alfred Döblin's legendary novel and a bold dialogue with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's series of the same title. The film's director, Burhan Qurbani, moves the action of the story from the interwar period to the present day, creating a nocturnal urban odyssey. The main character, Francis, has a dark past and, having arrived in Germany, wants to make an honest start in life. But all that awaits the undocumented immigrant are illegal work and a string of humiliations – unless he succumbs to the shameless charms of the local demi-monde.

Made from images filmed by the Syrian artist Amel Alzakout after the boat on which she was fleeing Syria sank off the coast of Lesbos, Purple Sea reports on the moment in which the co-director and the other passengers are floating in the sea in their life-jackets, waiting to be rescued. Her voice-over accompanies this extremely poignant experience.

German workers are building a power plant near the Bulgarian-Greek border. The water resources needed for this investment are insufficient and this deficit is a major problem and a cause of conflict with the inhabitants of a nearby village. When the workers have water in abundance, the taps of the locals are dry. The Bulgarian province is a far cry from German standards and most of those who come to work here look down on their neighbours and keep contact with them – apart from crude propositioning of local women – to a necessary minimum. With one exception: Meinhard who is his own man, tries successfully to make contact with the villagers, to get to know them and, despite the language barrier, seeks understanding. The main character in Valeska Grisebach's film is curious about people and their stories, free of prejudice and open to others. But this attitude comes with consequences: his colleagues become suspicious of him and the local community does not treat him as a friend either.

Using Western conventions in a somewhat perverse way – the confrontation between civilisation and frontier settlements, natives and newcomers, a lone protagonist and an unfamiliar community – the director talks about present day conflicts, often imaginary prejudices and the difficulties in overcoming them. The film tries – as the critics of this year's New Horizons Festival in Wrocław wrote in awarding it the main prize – ‘to describe the contemporary world, marked by fear of strangers and clashes of cultures; a world in which communication between people is rough, yet achievable.’

A literary festival is not just about meeting writers or talking about books. Any festival is also about having fun. And if we know a thing or two about fun, it's that it means a literary pub quiz! It can be a great opportunity to test your knowledge of literature, but above all it will help you soak up the atmosphere of Sopot by the Book!

Family reading of the Grimm fairy tale The Golden Bird combined with a workshop

Hosted by: Marta Jankowska (Kreatywna Pedagogika)

Why do we sometimes find it so difficult to listen to other people's advice? Are failures important in life and how can we cope with them? The workshop host will embark on a creative and challenging quest to find answers to these and other questions in the company of fairy-tale characters: a young prince, a fox and a golden princess. The event will be hosted by Marta Jankowska – an exceptional teacher, one of the leaders of the Gdansk Creative Pedagogy programme, which brings together teachers who seek innovative solutions.

hosts: Joanna Kujawska-Frejlich, Agata Walińska

During the workshop, we will get to know better the feathered heroines of Ulrich Hub's book, illustrated by Jurg Muhl, and talk about what friendship is. We will set our imagination in motion and, like on a film reel, frame by frame, we will paint the road the friends have travelled.

SAVVY Contemporary invites the audience to engage with one of their practices – a practice of participatory archiving of colonial history. The workshop will be an attempt to ground the conversation in the local context and reflect on the situatedness of Poland within the discussion on colonialism. On one side Poland signify a space where colonial policies were implemented by Prussia and Nazi Germany, on the other, the consolidation of the Polish national state project at the beginning of the twentieth century included a desire and ambition to acquire overseas colonies and constitute itself as one of European imperial powers. The workshop will invite participants to reflect on multilayerdness of both sides of history by situating them within their individual experiences and lived complexities of these silent entanglements.

Family reading of the Grimm fairy tale The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage combined with a workshop

Hosted by: Marta Jankowska (Kreatywna Pedagogika)

What is talent? Does everyone have one? What can be done to discover it and make good use of it? A useful workshop during which, inspired by fairy tales from over two hundred years ago, we will discover what is uniquely important to us here and now. Workshop participants will take on the role of talent trackers. The event will be led by Marta Jankowska – an exceptional teacher, one of the leaders of the Gdańsk-based Creative Pedagogy programme, which brings together teachers seeking innovative solutions.

Join us for a workshop inspired by Katja Gehrmann's book. We will listen to the story of how wild animals made their home in the city and whether a certain bear was up to the task. We will then make our own bear disguises and see if it is easy to be unnoticeable.

Registration from 1.08.

If you have ever wondered what a fairytale world would look like in our reality, you will be able to experience it in Sopot. During the game, prepared especially for the German edition of Sopot by the Book, you will be able to meet Little Red Riding Hood, take care of Hansel and Gretel, try on a slipper you have found and make friends with dwarves - provided, of course, that you don't get eaten by a wolf or caught by an evil witch beforehand!

Registration from 17.07. Fee required.

A workshop for those who would like to write something about their life but do not know how to go about it. How to write a text which makes sense and is well structured with a beginning, middle and end. We are going to practise the construction of sentences, paragraphs and entire texts. We are going to look at metaphors and comparisons. We will consider how not to overdo them. We are going to talk about what autobiographical writing is and the risks it involves.

The Grimm brothers' fairy tale The Louse and the Flea will be read by Magdalena Bednarek, an actress from the Miniatura Theatre. The reading will be followed by workshops inspired by the fairy tale's message.

How to help children regulate their emotions – workshop for adults | hosted by: Joanna Trzaska (psychologist, psychotherapist)

Emotions are nothing dangerous – workshop for children | hosted by: Marta Jankowska (Kreatywna Pedagogika)

We know from experience that emotions can carry us far and not always where we want or need them to. Therefore, there are emotions that we are afraid of or do not want to feel. Together with workshop participants, the hosts Joanna Trzaska and Marta Jankowska will discuss how to harness emotions, what they can be useful for and how to use them to make them our allies.

hosts: Joanna Kujawska-Frejlich, Agata Walińska

On the centenary of Otfried Preussler's birth, we would like you to listen to the story of a tiny witch. The reading will be followed by a workshop to create witches from wooden spoons and colourful materials. Otfried Preussler is the author of dozens of children's novels that have found worldwide acclaim.

The Brothers Grimm fairy tale The Three Spinners will be read by Magdalena Bednarek, an actress from the Miniatura Theatre. The reading will be followed by workshops inspired by the fairy tale's message.

Why children lie and what we can do about it – workshops for adults | hosted by: Joanna Trzaska (psychologist, psychotherapist)

Lying, no legs and being yourself – workshops for children | hosted by: Marta Jankowska (Kreatywna Pedagogika)

Why do we lie? How much does it cost us? Or does it pay to lie? Together with the participants, the hosts Joanna Trzaska and Marta Jankowska will look for answers to these questions, but, above all, they are going to think about how to deal with lying – in others and in ourselves.

Why are animals always the characters of in his books? Does he have children to whom he reads his stories first? Does he like to mess around and play the characters he invents? And what does it feel like when he sees them on stage in the theatre? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when you think of Urlich Hub – we hope you will bring even more of them to your meeting with this writer who loves puns and surprising situations.