Right now, I’m genuinely celebrating. I’ve just received the official notification that my application for a grant from the Minority Culture Fund has been approved, which means that this year my short story collection Felemás will be published by Abacus+ Publishing. The plan is to present it already at the beginning of October at the Budapest International Book Festival. The illustrations and the cover for the stories about the world of young adults are being created by Csilla Dózsa. It is a special joy for me that this publication is coming to life as part of a broader reading-promotion project. Erika Vályi Horváth, one of the founders of Abacus+ Publishing, is planning creative writing and therapeutic workshops as a developmental bibliotherapist, with the aim of encouraging high school students to enjoy reading. The book’s QR-code-based extra content and creative writing exercises will also be connected to this initiative.
With my manuscript Szalagavató, I won a creative scholarship, so now I also have to work at full steam on my new novel. At the moment, the imaginative storyteller and the strict editor are battling it out inside me.
The 97th Holiday Book Week catalogue for the Bázis organization is currently in preparation. I’m writing the book description for my young adult novel Kaland, which was published by Madách Publishing and will be available at the stand.
Preparations are also underway for Huncutka Kalandtábor. This year, for the 12th time already, we will once again welcome children to Tardoskedd with our constantly renewed programs.
At school, this week is already the week of the oral final examinations. At the Secondary Technical School of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering in Komárno, I am serving as the chair of the Slovak language and Slovak literature examination board, and then back home at Pázmány Péter Gymnasium, I will be examining my own students at the green table.
I also need to do some reading: I promised my daughter, Enikő, that I would finally start reading her thesis, which she will be soon defending in the psychology master’s program at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. I had postponed it until now because of its difficult subject matter: she was researching suicide exposure and its impact.
