The Malta Book Festival, organised by the National Book Council, will be held between November 4 and 8 at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta.

The event gathers local publishers and authors under one roof. Local distributors and bookshops will also be present.

This year, there will also be a Parisian bookshop and the Sicilian Publishers Association, thanks to a new intitiative supported by the French Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute.

Maltese authors and publishers will be presenting their latest books in a series of events forming part of the festival’s cultural and educational programme. For the first time this year, events will include activities that celebrate the winners of the National Book Prize, including Godfrey Wettinger, winner of the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Special guests will include French author Marie Darrieussecq, Syrian author Maram al-Masri, Romanian poet Dan Sociu and his publisher Bogdan Stanescu and Clive Boutle, the British publisher of the Maltese anthology This Fair Land.

Weekday mornings will be dedicated to visiting schoolchildren. Both public and private schools are invited to attend and participate in the Terramaxka Prize for Books for Children and Adolescents.

Every visiting student will be given a €3 voucher that can be redeemed at any stand during their visit.

This initiative has been set in motion to ensure that every child takes home a book to read and to keep.