Prima Vista Festival will this year take place in September

Literary festival Prima Vista, traditionally taking place in the first week of May, will this year, due to the Covid19 situation, be put off to September. Events and encounters linking with the theme of the festival ‘Small World’ will this year take place from the 20th to the 25th September.

‘This year, September will be the best time for the festival as hopefully it is then that we shall be full of hope and energy to apply the freedom of activity that Covid19 has dried up,’ Krista Aru, the chairwoman of the Prima Vista board said. ‘It is important for us that Prima Vista festival would allow human contact between the author and the public, the new book and the reader, that encounters between different worlds would wake sincere emotion. In May it would only be possible to participate in virtual encounters and events but these would not be our habitual multi-layered literary party full of many opportunities.’

In autumn, Tartu will entertain Etgar Keret, an author from Israel, Uwe Laub from Germany, Victor Shenderovitch from Russia, Norwegian authors Klara Hveberg and Knut Ødegård, Turid Farbregd, an estophil and translator of many Estonian authors, and Rvins Varde from Latvia. This year, the festival patron is Øyvind Rangøy, translator and poet of Norwegian origin. The programme will include a futurologic conference dedicated to Stanisław Lem’s work, a film and art programme, a concert Writers in Music, a book fair, several children’s events and much more. The futurological conference is a pilot project of the Tartu 2024 development programme.

The traditional preliminary event of Prima Vista, the Day of the Rose and the Book will take place in virtual form. On that day the laureate of the First Step contest will be announced, the speakers will be the very first laureate of the contest Anti Saar and other prize winners. In collaboration with publishers, the book fair will take place as a web campaign.

The traditional festival time in May will be marked with the international video project Sentimental Education of the non-profit organization Estonian Performance Poetry on the 7th of May: the videos will be presented at Prima Vista and the Liverpool festival WoW. The participants will be Estonian poet Tõnis Vilu who has inspired several videos, performance poet Joelle Taylor, and Adam Kammerling, a poet and theatre maker.

The main organizers of the festival are the NGO Literary Festival Prima Vista, Library of the University of Tartu, the Tartu Public Library, the Estonian Writers’ Union, and the Estonian Literary Society.

Additional information:

Annika Aas

communications manager

NGO Literary Festival Prima Vista

mob + 372 5266442