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Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Readers

Roll out of a national reading group campaign in support of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which celebrates an exceptional work of translated fiction, wanted to raise the profile of the prize among reading groups by creating a Readers Choice award.

The Literary Platform, working in association with The Reading Agency, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and Booktrust, co-ordinated 300 readers from 30 reading groups across the UK to shadow the prize and select a Readers Choice winner to be announced alongside the official winner at the award ceremony in May 2013.

The work we undertook included calling for applications, selecting reading groups, co-ordinating delivery of books and reading group materials, and securing content – such as photos, videos and written articles – from readers for The Reading Agency’s Reading Groups for Everyone website.

We also selected ten groups who travelled to London for a Readers Day, where they had the opportunity to meet other readers shadowing the prize and vote for the Readers Choice winner, as well as enjoying a range of activities including reader workshops, a translation duel and talks from the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize judges, authors and translators.

Feedback from the IFFP 2013 Reading Groups:

“A big thank you to and your colleagues for making last Saturday’s Readers’ Day such an enjoyable and educative day. The whole process has been interesting, stimulating and enjoyable, if at times rather challenging.”

Keith Harris, The Hepworth Book Group, West Yorkshire.

“Thank you so much for organising the IFFP readers’ project and the super day that we enjoyed on Saturday. We all enjoyed it so much and were affected by how much work goes into translated fiction.”

Sarah Maxted, Berkhamstead School Library Group, Hertfordshire.

“The value of the day and project was demonstrated clearly in the focus group session where a number of people who don’t normally read translated books said that they’d had their eyes opened to a whole new world of reading!”

Sam Ruddock, Writers’ Centre Norwich Readers’ Circle, Norwich.