First launched in 2013 and hosted by the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan, Taipei Rights Workshop aims at providing networking and first-hand information on the Taiwanese book market for international publishers.
It is a combination of a fellowship (sightseeing, visits to bookstores, meetings with local publishers) program and a workshop in which the fellows give presentations according to their expertise and serve as mentors in group discussion sessions.
Michael Gaeb studies Comparative Literature and Philosophy in Bonnn, Toulouse, Edinburgh and Berlin. He was Curator of the International Berlin Poetry festival from 2002 – 2006 and works as an agent since 2001. In 2003 he founded his own agency. Fellow of Frankfurt- , Torino- and Jerusalem-book-fair.
Anja Kretschmann works as a literary agent at the Liepman Agency, based in Zurich. She studied German literature in Dresden and Publishing studies in Stockholm (where she also spent several years guiding tourists from all over the world through the City Hall of Stockholm). Before joining Liepman in early 2016, she worked as PR and events manager at the Swiss-based publisher Kein & Aber, and as a publishing assistant at Freight Books in Glasgow as well as the Swedish easy-to-read publishing house Centrum för Lättläst in Stockholm.
Stella Nelissen is literary agent and foreign rights manager at the Marianne Schönbach Literary Agency in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She represents a number of international publishers and agencies in Holland, Germany and Scandinavia, and handles foreign rights for various Dutch authors and publishers. Stella studied at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany and has a Master’s degree from University of Amsterdam. Before she joined the Schönbach agency, she worked for various Dutch publishing houses, among which Prometheus and Hollands Diep. She is an absolute podcast aficionado, loves to listen to audiobooks in all genres and enjoys outdoor sports.
Li Kangqin is the founder of New River Literary Ltd, a London-based literary agency representing books and authors from East Asia. She holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of Leicester. Before establishing New River in 2019, she worked as acquisition editor and rights manager at Shanghai 99 Readers’ Culture for four years and a half. She was also a reader of, and advisor on, Sinophone books for MacLehose Press and Granta Books from 2010 to 2018.
Julia Demchenko is a literary agent at the Van Lear Agency, the Russian and Ukrainian co-agent for the selected list of the US, UK, Canadian and Asian publishers and literary agencies. She is dealing with foreign rights since 2010, when she started working at Olma Media Group, before she joined the agency in 2014. Previously she worked in the international news division of TVC channel.
Celia Long is Foreign Rights Director at AJA Paris, which represents French authors around the world (as primary agent) and European, Asian and North American authors in France & Europe (as co-agent). Originally from London, she graduated from the University of Leeds with a BA in French and Italian. Prior to joining AJA, Celia worked at Penguin Random House UK and Dorling Kindersley.
Maria Cardona is a literary agent at Pontas Literary & Film Agency since 2014, with previous experience at the Schalvezon Agency and publishing houses such as Ara Llibres and Malpaso. She is interested in literary and upmarket fiction.
Born in 1995, Kardelen Genc graduated from Istanbul University Faculty of Communication with a BA degree of Public Relations and Advertising. She studied Journalism in Vilnius during her exchange year. She has been working as a co-agent for foreign fiction titles at Kalem Agency for 4 years now. She also worked as a festival curator at Istanbul International Literature Festival 2020. Besides her publishing experience, she's currently writing for online literary magazines and translating fiction titles from English to Turkish.
Joshua Dyer is a Tainan-based freelance translator and contributing editor at Pathlight. His previous translations have appeared in Taiwan Literature English Translation Series, St. Petersburg Review, LEAP: The International Art Magazine of Contemporary China, and Pathlight. He holds an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara.
Teresa Pütz is an editor for foreign fiction at S. Fischer Verlage in Frankfurt, Germany. She acquires literary and upmarket fiction from all around the world. Her list of authors includes Petina Gappah, Jennifer Egan, Javier Marías, C Pam Zhang, Charlotte McConaghy and many others. Prior to joining S. Fischer in 2017, Teresa started her publishing career at the PR and Events department at Penguin Random House Germany and worked as an editor at Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur in Munich.
It was a great experience, that everybody was really eager to learn and totally devoted to their job. The workshop was perfectly organized and I learned a lot from my fellows.
A most profound, enriching and inspiring experience and a brilliant chance for exchange across all borders which led to a deeper understanding not only of the Taiwanese bookmarket, culture and history but other markets as well.
It was truly an amazing experience that I will remember forever. As it was my first visit to Asia I couldn't expect it to be any better. The Workshop gave me a lot of insight into different markets and approaches to publishing, it is hard to even describe how much I have learned about the culture and the Taiwanese Book Market.