The Literaure Team aim to present some of the best of a wide range of all kinds of UK literature, overseas.

We work with those British Council offices overseas who require Literature input into their Arts plans, and we work in a range of ways depending on the strategy of the country concerned. For example, we organise tours, seminars, conferences and projects and work with a wide range of contemporary writers and critics.

British Council offices, in turn, work with their partners to achieve the end result. We work to ensure that the strategies of both the Council office in the country and their partner are met. These strategies will vary from country to country and office to office and will be specific to the particular locality. Often an office comes to us with a very specific request for one key individual to attend a literature festival, or a writer whose work is being published in translation and who is invited to visit to help promote the book locally. At other times we have more leeway to suggest someone and are able to suggest individual writers to take part in Literature work overseas.

We do not have a stable of writers with whom we work. We select writers from as wide a range as possible on a project by project basis, according to their suitability to undertake the particular activity in question. We work with writers of many types of literature, including the novel, short story, drama, poetry, science fiction, crime writing, writing for children, literary criticism, literary biography, travel writing and writing for performance.

When choosing authors to work with, we take advice from a wide range of contacts within literature organisations in the UK including the Arts Councils and literature festivals. We welcome information from publishers, agents and promoters on writers who they publish or represent so that we can keep this on file. We also keep up to date with the range of literature produced in the UK today by having specialist officers in our London office.

(Image Credit: Anita Schiffer-Fuchs)