events

‘Eleven Spirits’ unfolds through eleven sculptural drinking basins distributed throughout the garden of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator. Echoing Sopot’s eleven streams, the work symbolically returns water to a landscape where it once flowed freely, reactivating forgotten hydrological and cultural memories. Each basin becomes a meeting point for water, wildlife, vegetation, and unseen forces, activating a sensitive spiral between species and the environment.

The project begins with the notion of genius loci — the spirit of place. Across European folk traditions, rivers, springs, and still waters have often been imagined as inhabited by liminal feminine presences, such as the Slavic rusałka or the Portuguese moura encantada. Rather than appearing as fixed figures, these beings remain as cultural echoes of a shared intuition: that water holds presence, memory, and the capacity for transformation. Within the installation, these presences are not represented but dispersed into material conditions. Through its unique material composition of clay, embedded small hematite beads, and other symbolic elements, each basin becomes a localised expression of this invisible presence, translating environmental forces into tangible, reflective, and symbolic forms.

The design is inspired by the form of the umbigo-de-vênus (Umbilicus rupestris), a Portuguese plant symbolically connected to the mythology of Venus: fertility, nourishment, protection, and the origins of life. The basins take the shape of receptive, concave vessels. They become fertile centres of gathering and care, places where water is held, shared, and offered back to the garden. Varying in height and placement, the sculptures welcome different animal species while establishing a dynamic spatial relationship with the garden. Reflective surfaces and luminous materials continuously mirror the sky, vegetation, and movement, dissolving the boundaries between the sculpture and the surrounding landscape.

Artist Inês Brites invites audience to experience the Goyki 3 garden mindfully from different locations. She encourages visitors to reflect on alternative narratives of nation-building and how landscapes are shaped by intertwined stories of nature and culture — not only through national history, but also through water, mythologies, and relations with other species that belong to the living space.

Created for the fifteenth edition of the Sopot by the Book Festival, the project forms part of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator visual arts programme. In 2026, this programme explores the concepts of national mythologies.

directed by: Eva Libertad (2025), Spain, 99 min.

The film won the 2026 LUX Audience Award, which is presented by European cinema-goers and MEPs. Deaf is a beautiful, heart-warming story about how even the strongest feelings can be tested by everyday life. Ángela and Héctor are a loving couple who suddenly find themselves facing an avalanche of emotions and difficulties. She has always lived in a world of silence, while he is only just learning to navigate it alongside her. When their daughter is born, they must wait several months to find out if she can hear. This period becomes a test of not only their relationship, but also just how much love can endure—even when words are lacking.

Listen live on the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator terrace or at www.literackisopot.pl. You can also catch the episodes later as podcasts on Spotify under ‘Goyki 3 on air’. The programme features conversations about literature, readings from selected texts, and great music!

‘Eleven Spirits’ unfolds through eleven sculptural drinking basins distributed throughout the garden of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator. Echoing Sopot’s eleven streams, the work symbolically returns water to a landscape where it once flowed freely, reactivating forgotten hydrological and cultural memories. Each basin becomes a meeting point for water, wildlife, vegetation, and unseen forces, activating a sensitive spiral between species and the environment.

The project begins with the notion of genius loci — the spirit of place. Across European folk traditions, rivers, springs, and still waters have often been imagined as inhabited by liminal feminine presences, such as the Slavic rusałka or the Portuguese moura encantada. Rather than appearing as fixed figures, these beings remain as cultural echoes of a shared intuition: that water holds presence, memory, and the capacity for transformation. Within the installation, these presences are not represented but dispersed into material conditions. Through its unique material composition of clay, embedded small hematite beads, and other symbolic elements, each basin becomes a localised expression of this invisible presence, translating environmental forces into tangible, reflective, and symbolic forms.

The design is inspired by the form of the umbigo-de-vênus (Umbilicus rupestris), a Portuguese plant symbolically connected to the mythology of Venus: fertility, nourishment, protection, and the origins of life. The basins take the shape of receptive, concave vessels. They become fertile centres of gathering and care, places where water is held, shared, and offered back to the garden. Varying in height and placement, the sculptures welcome different animal species while establishing a dynamic spatial relationship with the garden. Reflective surfaces and luminous materials continuously mirror the sky, vegetation, and movement, dissolving the boundaries between the sculpture and the surrounding landscape.

Artist Inês Brites invites audience to experience the Goyki 3 garden mindfully from different locations. She encourages visitors to reflect on alternative narratives of nation-building and how landscapes are shaped by intertwined stories of nature and culture — not only through national history, but also through water, mythologies, and relations with other species that belong to the living space.

Created for the fifteenth edition of the Sopot by the Book Festival, the project forms part of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator visual arts programme. In 2026, this programme explores the concepts of national mythologies.

Family reading and creative workshops inspired by If I Were a Book by André Letria and José Jorge Letria (Polish trans. Olga Bagińska-Shinzato, Format Publishing; English trans. Isabel Terry, Chronicle Books)

A book is so much more than just a collection of printed pages bound together in the right order. It is a magical object with many worlds hidden inside. The famous Portuguese father-and-son creators, José Jorge Letria (writer) and André Letria (illustrator), show us that a book can do almost anything. It can become a bridge, a staircase, or a mountain peak. How is that possible? What can reading give us? How do you make your very own book?

Join us at our workshops to discover your inner book lover, even if you didn’t know you had one! And that’s just the beginning. First, we will lose ourselves in someone else’s book, and then the grand finale will be creating your own.

• Wydawnictwo Afera
• Wydawnictwo Agora
• Wydawnictwo Akapit Press
• Wydawnictwo Amaltea
• Wydawnictwo ArtRage
• Wydawnictwo BOSZ
• Wydawnictwo Claroscuro
• Wydawnictwo Czarne
• Wydawnictwo CzuCzu
• Gdańsk Psychological Publishing
• Goyki 3 Art Inkubator
• Instytut Camões
• Wydawnictwo Kameleon
• Wydawnictwo Książkowe Klimaty
• Wydawnictwo Kultura Gniewu
• Wydawnictwo Literackie
• Wydawnictwo Marginesy
• Wydawnictwo Marpress Sp. z o.o.
• Wydawnictwo Mięta
• Muzeum Sopotu / Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna w Sopocie
• Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo NISZA
• Wydawnictwo Obierki
• Wydawnictwo Pauza
• Wydawnictwo Poznańskie
• Wydawnictwo Smak Słowa
• Wydawnictwo Sonia Draga oraz Wydawnictwo Debit
• Publisher timof comics
• Wydawnictwo Tu się czyta
• Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego
• Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej i Miejskiej Biblioteki Publicznej w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo Zakamarki
• Wydawnictwo ZNAK

How to outwit wild creatures? Find out by listening to the traditional Portuguese fairy tale Run, Pumpkin, Run. During the workshop, we will make large-format masks. We will decorate ready-made cardboard templates with various art materials to make them look like the animals that Grandma met on her way.

A discussion about the origins of the growing popularity of book clubs, and the reasons why reading together has become important again. We will discuss whether book clubs are a response to screen overload, a desire to socialize, or simply a new way of experiencing literature. This will be a conversation about communities, relationships, and how books today go beyond the page to become a reason to meet up. In Poland, this trend is really taking off: the Book Institute reported that the number of Book Discussion Clubs exceeded two thousand for the first time in 2025.

Do works of literature by women from the Portuguese-speaking world share a common theme? Despite writing on different continents, female authors from Brazil, Portugal, and Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) are united by a unique sensibility, a struggle for agency, and a revolutionary approach to form. Clarice Lispector, the ‘Sphinx of Rio de Janeiro’, will be the central figure of this literary universe and this year’s debate with translators. Her prose defies definition and is currently enjoying a true renaissance in Poland. This discussion of Lispector’s work will also provide an opportunity to consider the current status of Portuguese-speaking women writers and the visibility of their work.

Together with our invited guests, we will consider:

• Why does Lispector continue to mesmerise us, and how has the reception of her work evolved in Poland?
• What challenges does a translator face when attempting to capture the ‘wildness of the heart’ of this Brazilian master?
• Where can we find points of contact between Lispector’s prose and that of contemporary female authors from Portugal and Africa?

The discussion will feature: Wojciech Charchalis, an outstanding translator of Spanish- and Portuguese-language literature who introduced Polish readers to Clarice Lispector’s short stories. Gabriel Borowski, a translator and researcher who co-authored new translations of Lispector’s works, ensuring a fresh and precise approach to her challenging prose. Dr Natalia Klidzio (UMCS), a literary scholar and specialist in the Department of Portuguese Studies, who will outline the broader research context of women’s literature in the Lusophone world.

Recently, we have seen a surge in the number of literary festivals, as well as their rapid growth. Sopot by the Book is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. To mark this milestone, we have decided to discuss the future of literary events and reflect on their current state and future direction. Are festivals merely platforms for promoting new publications today, or are they evolving into festivals of ideas? What challenges do organisers face? How can we effectively break out of the bubble of regular readers and reach people who do not read on a daily basis? Can festivals build lasting communities, and if so, how? Our panellists will be Marta Czarnecka (Sopot by the Book), Katarzyna Komar-Macyńska (Miasto z Rzeką) and Katarzyna Krawczyk (Granatowe Góry, Literacki Świdwin); the discussion will be moderated by Justyna Sobolewska (Festiwal Początek Sezonu).

Directed by: Sarah Maldoror (1972), Angola, 102 min.

One of the most important works depicting the struggle of the Angolan freedom movement, this film tells the story of a woman travelling through Luanda, from the suburbs to the city centre, in search of her husband, who disappeared after being arrested by the Portuguese secret police. By employing non-professional actors, people who had direct ties to the freedom movement, Sarah Maldoror reveals the true story, the quiet role of women in the Algerian revolution, and the consequences of colonial oppression.

A literary festival is about more than just meeting writers and talking about books. Any festival is also about having fun! If we know anything about fun, it is that it means a literary pub quiz. It is a great way to test your literary knowledge and soak up the atmosphere of Sopot by the Book.

Registration from: 1.08

Book Art Printing and Bookbinding Workshop

Join this book art workshop to hand-craft your own Festival notebook inspired by literature, printing, and traditional book crafts. In the first part of the session, you will explore letterpress – typographic printing performed on a printing press using traditional type and forms. Each participant will print their own notebook cover using a selection of graphic designs. We will work on a typographic press, giving you the chance to see the historical printing process used to create books and publications. The second part of the workshop focuses on the basics of bookbinding. Under the guidance of our instructors, you will join your printed covers with a prepared book block to create a finished Festival notebook. Inside, you’ll find a special section – a ‘literary discoveries list’ – where you can record the authors, titles, and inspirations you find throughout the Festival.

Registration from: 1.08

Listen live on the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator terrace or at www.literackisopot.pl. You can also catch the episodes later as podcasts on Spotify under ‘Goyki 3 on air’. The programme features conversations about literature, readings from selected texts, and great music!

‘Eleven Spirits’ unfolds through eleven sculptural drinking basins distributed throughout the garden of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator. Echoing Sopot’s eleven streams, the work symbolically returns water to a landscape where it once flowed freely, reactivating forgotten hydrological and cultural memories. Each basin becomes a meeting point for water, wildlife, vegetation, and unseen forces, activating a sensitive spiral between species and the environment.

The project begins with the notion of genius loci — the spirit of place. Across European folk traditions, rivers, springs, and still waters have often been imagined as inhabited by liminal feminine presences, such as the Slavic rusałka or the Portuguese moura encantada. Rather than appearing as fixed figures, these beings remain as cultural echoes of a shared intuition: that water holds presence, memory, and the capacity for transformation. Within the installation, these presences are not represented but dispersed into material conditions. Through its unique material composition of clay, embedded small hematite beads, and other symbolic elements, each basin becomes a localised expression of this invisible presence, translating environmental forces into tangible, reflective, and symbolic forms.

The design is inspired by the form of the umbigo-de-vênus (Umbilicus rupestris), a Portuguese plant symbolically connected to the mythology of Venus: fertility, nourishment, protection, and the origins of life. The basins take the shape of receptive, concave vessels. They become fertile centres of gathering and care, places where water is held, shared, and offered back to the garden. Varying in height and placement, the sculptures welcome different animal species while establishing a dynamic spatial relationship with the garden. Reflective surfaces and luminous materials continuously mirror the sky, vegetation, and movement, dissolving the boundaries between the sculpture and the surrounding landscape.

Artist Inês Brites invites audience to experience the Goyki 3 garden mindfully from different locations. She encourages visitors to reflect on alternative narratives of nation-building and how landscapes are shaped by intertwined stories of nature and culture — not only through national history, but also through water, mythologies, and relations with other species that belong to the living space.

Created for the fifteenth edition of the Sopot by the Book Festival, the project forms part of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator visual arts programme. In 2026, this programme explores the concepts of national mythologies.

Build a ‘literary treasure hunt’ across Sopot – starting from Goyki 3 and ending at a secret location. You will use the local landscape and daily scenes to inspire your writing. Meet Zero Pilnik at the secret final spot and make your way back towards Goyki 3. Along the route, you will choose a spot that inspires you. It could be a bench with a beautiful view, a corner where the waves crash, a place filled with the aroma of fresh coffee, or a building with unusual architecture. You will then write a scenic description of your location, engaging all your senses. You can choose the form you like best, such as poetry, prose, a film script, or a stage play. The group will meet back at Goyki 3 for a round of feedback from Zero. Finally, we will present our work to an audience who will try to guess each spot using the clues in your writing. The aim of the workshop is to capture the essence of a location using only words. The end result will be a map of beautiful, interesting, and intriguing locations for both locals and visitors to explore.

The workshops will be conducted in English.

Registration from: 1.08

Family reading and creative workshops inspired by Cem sementes que voaram by Isabel Minhós Martins and Yara Kono (Polish trans. Joanna Kuhn, Kinderkulka Publishing).

‘The tree waits, full of hope. What is it waiting for? For the perfect day to scatter its seeds. What is it hoping for? That everything will work out.’ In her beautiful writing, Isabel Minhós Martins explores the natural rhythm of nature, which, despite what we sometimes think, is also our own human rhythm. Is it easy to wait? How can we practice patience? Join us for a creative gardening-themed workshop. During the session, we will plant our own seeds. Are you not curious to see what will grow from them?

• Wydawnictwo Afera
• Wydawnictwo Agora
• Wydawnictwo Akapit Press
• Wydawnictwo Amaltea
• Wydawnictwo ArtRage
• Wydawnictwo BOSZ
• Wydawnictwo Claroscuro
• Wydawnictwo Czarne
• Wydawnictwo CzuCzu
• Gdańsk Psychological Publishing
• Goyki 3 Art Inkubator
• Instytut Camões
• Wydawnictwo Kameleon
• Wydawnictwo Książkowe Klimaty
• Wydawnictwo Kultura Gniewu
• Wydawnictwo Literackie
• Wydawnictwo Marginesy
• Wydawnictwo Marpress Sp. z o.o.
• Wydawnictwo Mięta
• Muzeum Sopotu / Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna w Sopocie
• Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo NISZA
• Wydawnictwo Obierki
• Wydawnictwo Pauza
• Wydawnictwo Poznańskie
• Wydawnictwo Smak Słowa
• Wydawnictwo Sonia Draga oraz Wydawnictwo Debit
• Publisher timof comics
• Wydawnictwo Tu się czyta
• Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego
• Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej i Miejskiej Biblioteki Publicznej w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo Zakamarki
• Wydawnictwo ZNAK

Join the characters from the book Os Peixes Que Fugiram da História by Maria João Freitas and Mariana Rio, published by Widnokrąg, as we embark on a journey to discover where the fish have gone and how we can help them. In the workshop, we will take inspiration from the distinctive azulejo tile-decorating style and paint sea stories about fish onto ceramic tiles.

A conversation about the journey from online creativity to influencing the reading choices of thousands of people. Starting with Kamila Kolińska’s books and her online presence, the discussion will expand to explore the broader meaning of the title ‘Book Person’ today. Does it merely entail popularity, or does it also entail responsibility for taste, trends, and the way young people talk about literature?

The discussion on Portuguese comics will feature André F. Morgado, a comic book author and co-founder of A Seita, one of Portugal’s most active comic book publishers; Pedro Moura, a lecturer and critic specialising in comics, and author of the blogs Lerbd and Yellow Fast & Crumble; and André Oliveira, a comic book scriptwriter and member of The Lisbon Studio, a collective of comic artists, animators, illustrators, scriptwriters, and filmmakers. The discussion will be moderated by Łukasz Wojtusik, a radio journalist and host of the Alfabet Wojtusika podcast.

The trauma of centuries of slavery continues to shape the fate of Black communities, but its traces can be transformed through the art of liberation. The discussion will feature Dr Kacper Dziekan, a historian, researcher, and museum professional; Raquel Lima, a poet, arts educator, performer, essayist, curator, and transdisciplinary artist, as well as co-founder of the Black Artists’ Union (União Negra de Artes) in Portugal; and Michelle Sales, an academic, researcher, and independent curator, as well as the curator of the Kugoma Film Festival in Maputo, Mozambique. They will explore the legacy of colonialism, the history of slavery, and the enduring consequences of the Portuguese conquest. Joanna Cichocka-Gula, director of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator, will host the conversation.

Secret Trysts (Tajne schadzki) is a book club designed for singles, solos, and the non-booked. Created by the Filomatki and Filaretki duo, this unique format is usually held at the Tajne Komplety bookshop in Gdańsk and consists of several rounds of small-group discussions with rotating participants, encouraging everyone to meet as many new people as possible. Each meeting revolves around books that explore significant socio-existential themes and spark emotions that foster romantic and friendly relationships.

Directed by: Miguel Gomes (2012), Portugal, Germany, France, Brasil, 112 min.

A classic romance, but only at first glance. Styled after old Hollywood and breaking the conventions of film narrative, this work presents two stories: one of a past love and one of the search for an old lover. When an elderly woman dies, her maid and neighbour track down her mysterious lover and uncover the secrets of their life together. Thanks to its original stylization, this story subverts the conventions of the romance genre while serving as a lesson on the transience of life and buried feelings.

What does a photograph mean to a reporter? Is it more often a source of inspiration, a source of information, or a tool? How can a few photographs be used to tell the story of a person’s life, and how can a dozen or so be used to tell the story of an entire nation? Why are there no photographs in Ryszard Kapuściński’s books? How does Małgorzata Szejnert work with photographs

During this workshop, you will learn reportage techniques that breathe life into the people in old photographs. You will learn how to look at photographs to see more. You will also learn what makes them become symbols and how to read them critically in such cases. What surprises can archives hold? What if the truth lies between the frames?

Registration from: 1.08

Listen live on the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator terrace or at www.literackisopot.pl. You can also catch the episodes later as podcasts on Spotify under ‘Goyki 3 on air’. The programme features conversations about literature, readings from selected texts, and great music!

‘Eleven Spirits’ unfolds through eleven sculptural drinking basins distributed throughout the garden of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator. Echoing Sopot’s eleven streams, the work symbolically returns water to a landscape where it once flowed freely, reactivating forgotten hydrological and cultural memories. Each basin becomes a meeting point for water, wildlife, vegetation, and unseen forces, activating a sensitive spiral between species and the environment.

The project begins with the notion of genius loci — the spirit of place. Across European folk traditions, rivers, springs, and still waters have often been imagined as inhabited by liminal feminine presences, such as the Slavic rusałka or the Portuguese moura encantada. Rather than appearing as fixed figures, these beings remain as cultural echoes of a shared intuition: that water holds presence, memory, and the capacity for transformation. Within the installation, these presences are not represented but dispersed into material conditions. Through its unique material composition of clay, embedded small hematite beads, and other symbolic elements, each basin becomes a localised expression of this invisible presence, translating environmental forces into tangible, reflective, and symbolic forms.

The design is inspired by the form of the umbigo-de-vênus (Umbilicus rupestris), a Portuguese plant symbolically connected to the mythology of Venus: fertility, nourishment, protection, and the origins of life. The basins take the shape of receptive, concave vessels. They become fertile centres of gathering and care, places where water is held, shared, and offered back to the garden. Varying in height and placement, the sculptures welcome different animal species while establishing a dynamic spatial relationship with the garden. Reflective surfaces and luminous materials continuously mirror the sky, vegetation, and movement, dissolving the boundaries between the sculpture and the surrounding landscape.

Artist Inês Brites invites audience to experience the Goyki 3 garden mindfully from different locations. She encourages visitors to reflect on alternative narratives of nation-building and how landscapes are shaped by intertwined stories of nature and culture — not only through national history, but also through water, mythologies, and relations with other species that belong to the living space.

Created for the fifteenth edition of the Sopot by the Book Festival, the project forms part of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator visual arts programme. In 2026, this programme explores the concepts of national mythologies.

Family reading and creative workshops inspired by As Time Passes by Isabel Minhós Martins and Madalena Matoso (Polish edition Babaryba Publishing; English edition Design for Today).

Sometimes it flees; sometimes it flows; sometimes it chases; and sometimes it drags on. It changes everything around us. We will pause for a moment to observe it passing by. We will use hourglasses to create magical clocks for capturing moments of joy.

A meeting for parents on childhood and parenting, based on Michel Laub’s Diary of the Fall (Polish trans. Wojciech Charchalis, Pauza; English trans. Margaret Jull Costa, Other Press).

Diary of the Fall is a story about the lives of a grandfather, father, and son, and it explores how trauma manifests itself across generations, as well as the search for one’s own agency and control. The book will serve as a starting point for a discussion on the extent to which we have control over the process of raising our children as parents. We often demand too much of ourselves, harbouring ambitious and sometimes unrealistic visions of parenthood. Our relationship with our child can be accompanied by strong emotions that trigger feelings of guilt. We may feel anger or boredom and sometimes find ourselves afraid of our child or feeling inadequate, especially when we are unable to meet their needs and expectations for various reasons. During the session, we will discuss ‘psychological awareness’, that is, understanding what is best for the child in their interactions with us..

Translators and interpreters from the Polish Literary Translators Association (STL) will be on duty in Goyki Park. During the duty hours, they will be happy to share their knowledge about their translations or autograph their editions.

Have you ever dreamed of setting off on a long journey? To discover the unknown? To explore the unexplored?

When we embark on such an adventure, it is important to remember what we are leaving behind. We must also avoid losing what we already have. On Saturday, the Os Descobridores da Literatura. The Explorers of Literature urban game awaits you. Gather a team (or set off alone!), get your compass and sextant ready, adjust your pantaloons, and join us on an expedition to discover lesser-known aspects of Portuguese culture. You will also revisit the more well-known aspects, because it is great fun! So, if you know the link between Lisbon and Odysseus, find yourself humming Amália Rodrigues tunes, or simply want to have a good time, sign up and come along!

Registration from: 1.08

• Wydawnictwo Afera
• Wydawnictwo Agora
• Wydawnictwo Akapit Press
• Wydawnictwo Amaltea
• Wydawnictwo ArtRage
• Wydawnictwo BOSZ
• Wydawnictwo Claroscuro
• Wydawnictwo Czarne
• Wydawnictwo CzuCzu
• Gdańsk Psychological Publishing
• Goyki 3 Art Inkubator
• Instytut Camões
• Wydawnictwo Kameleon
• Wydawnictwo Książkowe Klimaty
• Wydawnictwo Kultura Gniewu
• Wydawnictwo Literackie
• Wydawnictwo Marginesy
• Wydawnictwo Marpress Sp. z o.o.
• Wydawnictwo Mięta
• Muzeum Sopotu / Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna w Sopocie
• Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo NISZA
• Wydawnictwo Obierki
• Wydawnictwo Pauza
• Wydawnictwo Poznańskie
• Wydawnictwo Smak Słowa
• Wydawnictwo Sonia Draga oraz Wydawnictwo Debit
• Publisher timof comics
• Wydawnictwo Tu się czyta
• Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego
• Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej i Miejskiej Biblioteki Publicznej w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo Zakamarki
• Wydawnictwo ZNAK

First, we’ll listen to a Portuguese legend about a rooster that saved a traveller’s life. During the workshop, we will decorate large cardboard rooster models. We’ll then use the dot-painting technique to paint them in traditional, colourful Portuguese patterns.

Anna Świrszczyńska is one of the most important precursors of contemporary Polish feminism. Focusing on the female experience, physicality, motherhood, old age, and violence, her poetry was ahead of its time, offering a radically new language to describe women’s lives. Participants in the discussion devoted to her writing will examine feminist interpretations of Świrszczyńska’s poetry, her place in literary history, and the influence of her language and imagination on contemporary Polish literature. Taking part in the discussion will be literary scholar and critic Anna Marchewka, poet, essayist, and editor Joanna Mueller, and literary scholar and academic lecturer Katarzyna Szopa. The discussion will be hosted by Paulina Małochleb.

Bookish social media is changing faster than ever. Some formats are fading away, while others are capturing audiences’ attention. Online creators are also exerting an ever-greater influence on what we read and how we talk about books. In a meeting with Bestselerki – Anna Bartłomiejczyk and Marta Gajewska – we will discuss the future direction of the book-focused internet. We will explore BookTube, BookTok, and new ways of discussing literature. We will also examine responsibility, authenticity, and collaborations, as well as whether bookish social media will remain primarily a space for recommendations and community or become a fully-fledged component of the book market.

During this live demonstration of literary translation, the audience will have a rare opportunity to observe literary translators at work, discuss their translation choices with them, and follow the process of conveying meaning between languages in real time. This will be made possible by displaying the source and target texts on a large screen in statu nascendi. The translators will comment on interesting passages, explain their reasoning, and answer questions from the audience. This demonstration will provide viewers with an insight into the specifics of literary translation and, hopefully, dispel the persistent belief that translation is merely ‘swapping words from one language to another’. The live translation session will feature Aleksandra Woźniak-Marchewka, who translates from Chinese and Japanese, and Katarzyna Sosnowska, who translates from Basque.

A reading of the adapted version of the reportage Bzik kolonialny. II Rzeczypospolitej przypadki zamorskie by Grzegorz Łyś, directed by Adam Nalepa.

Script: Roman Pawłowski-Felberg

Direction: Adam Nalepa

Music: Irek Wojtczak

Starring: aktorzy scen Trójmiasta

Production: Goyki 3 Art Inkubator, Teatr BOTO

This staged reading, inspired by Grzegorz Łyś’s book Bzik kolonialny: II Rzeczpospolitej przypadki zamorskie (W.A.B.), evokes an almost forgotten chapter of Polish history: the interwar dream of acquiring overseas colonies. Drawing on excerpts from the book, press articles, travel literature, and period documents, this documentary montage reveals the language, imagery, and stereotypes surrounding Polish colonial projects in regions including Angola, Liberia, and Madagascar.

In the fictional Café Madagaskar, politicians, travellers, activists from the Maritime and

Colonial League, and prospective settlers gather. Seated at their tables, they spin tales of exotic lands, dream of Poland’s colonial might, and fantasize about life in Africa. They are accompanied by live performances of 1930s songs – such as ‘Madagascar’, ‘Angola’, and ‘For You I Want to Be White’ – which, in an entertaining form, expose the colonial fantasies prevalent in the popular culture of the Second Polish Republic.

The Sopot by the Book Festival offers a fantastic opportunity to meet authors from Poland and abroad, as well as other notable literary figures. However, the reading club is designed to put readers themselves in the spotlight, creating space for them to connect with one another. The small-group discussion format ensures that everyone has a chance to share their thoughts and reading experiences while hearing the insights and emotions of others. The Festival Book Club continues to meet throughout the year.Festiwal Literacki Sopot jest wspaniałą okazją, by spotkać wielu autorów i wiele autorek z Polski i zagranicy, a także medialne osoby zajmujące się literaturą. Klub książki ma być jednak przestrzenią do tego, by to czytelnicy i czytelniczki byli w centrum zainteresowania i nawiązywali kontakt ze sobą nawzajem. Formuła rozmów zapewnia warunki do tego, by każda osoba miała możliwość podzielenia się własnymi przeżyciami czytelniczymi i opiniami, a także usłyszenia o wrażeniach i przemyśleniach innych osób. Festiwalowy Klub Czytelniczy spotyka się też w ciągu roku.

XXNa klubie porozmawiamy o Dzienniku upadku Michela Lauba (tłum. Wojciech Charchalis, wyd. Pauza).

Directed by: João Canijo (2011), Portugal, 139 min.

A week in the life of a family living in the slums of Lisbon, where Márcia—a single mother of two children, Joca and Cláudia—tries to keep her household afloat on her restaurant salary and to build a better life for herself and her loved ones. However, her efforts are complicated by her children’s problems: Joca becomes entangled in a drug scandal, and Cláudia begins an affair with a married professor. The story depicts the realities of life in a disadvantaged part of a big city, as well as the burden of navigating motherhood, maintaining a household, and caring for others.

Asmission: 16+

Listen live on the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator terrace or at www.literackisopot.pl. You can also catch the episodes later as podcasts on Spotify under ‘Goyki 3 on air’. The programme features conversations about literature, readings from selected texts, and great music!

‘Eleven Spirits’ unfolds through eleven sculptural drinking basins distributed throughout the garden of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator. Echoing Sopot’s eleven streams, the work symbolically returns water to a landscape where it once flowed freely, reactivating forgotten hydrological and cultural memories. Each basin becomes a meeting point for water, wildlife, vegetation, and unseen forces, activating a sensitive spiral between species and the environment.

The project begins with the notion of genius loci — the spirit of place. Across European folk traditions, rivers, springs, and still waters have often been imagined as inhabited by liminal feminine presences, such as the Slavic rusałka or the Portuguese moura encantada. Rather than appearing as fixed figures, these beings remain as cultural echoes of a shared intuition: that water holds presence, memory, and the capacity for transformation. Within the installation, these presences are not represented but dispersed into material conditions. Through its unique material composition of clay, embedded small hematite beads, and other symbolic elements, each basin becomes a localised expression of this invisible presence, translating environmental forces into tangible, reflective, and symbolic forms.

The design is inspired by the form of the umbigo-de-vênus (Umbilicus rupestris), a Portuguese plant symbolically connected to the mythology of Venus: fertility, nourishment, protection, and the origins of life. The basins take the shape of receptive, concave vessels. They become fertile centres of gathering and care, places where water is held, shared, and offered back to the garden. Varying in height and placement, the sculptures welcome different animal species while establishing a dynamic spatial relationship with the garden. Reflective surfaces and luminous materials continuously mirror the sky, vegetation, and movement, dissolving the boundaries between the sculpture and the surrounding landscape.

Artist Inês Brites invites audience to experience the Goyki 3 garden mindfully from different locations. She encourages visitors to reflect on alternative narratives of nation-building and how landscapes are shaped by intertwined stories of nature and culture — not only through national history, but also through water, mythologies, and relations with other species that belong to the living space.

Created for the fifteenth edition of the Sopot by the Book Festival, the project forms part of the Goyki 3 Art Inkubator visual arts programme. In 2026, this programme explores the concepts of national mythologies.

Family reading and creative workshops inspired by Os peixes que fugiram da história by Maria João Freitas and Mariana Rio (Polish trans. Jakub Jankowski, Widnokrąg) and Ocean: A Visual Miscellany by Ricardo Henriques and André Letria (Polish trans. Jakub Jankowski, Tako Publishing; English trans. Chronicle Books).

We will delve into two beautifully illustrated books about the sea and try to solve some puzzles. Why have the fish disappeared? Does the sea need help? How do you become a sea wolf or a sea she-wolf? We will find the answers to these questions and more during our maritime workshops.

A meeting for parents focusing on childhood and parenting, based on Adriana Lisboa’s book Crow Blue (Polish trans. Wojciech Charchalis, Rebis Publishing; English trans. Alison Entrekin, Bloomsbury Publishing).

In Crow Blue, Adriana Lisboa gives a moving account of growing up, family life, and searching for one’s roots. During the meeting, we will discuss the importance of a child knowing their family history, of understanding the people who belong to it—or who belonged to it in the past—and of understanding what happened to them. The host will explain how difficult events in a family’s history can have a lasting impact on family life and a child’s development today.

If you’re interested in historic villas, old gardens, and parks, and you don’t mind walking along unspoilt paths, then this is the event for you! Accompanied by nature enthusiast Joanna Fryda (pronounced Fri-da) and amateur historian Kamil Antoniuk (pronounced An-ton-yuk), you will discover some of Sopot’s lesser-known corners. You’ll learn more about Goyki Park at the start of the walk, before heading through the Babidolski Stream valley towards the Wąwozy Grodowe nature reserve. The walk will finish by the picturesque pond on Młyńska Street.

Translators and interpreters from the Polish Literary Translators Association (STL) will be on duty in Goyki Park. During the duty hours, they will be happy to share their knowledge about their translations or autograph their editions.

• Wydawnictwo Afera
• Wydawnictwo Agora
• Wydawnictwo Akapit Press
• Wydawnictwo Amaltea
• Wydawnictwo ArtRage
• Wydawnictwo BOSZ
• Wydawnictwo Claroscuro
• Wydawnictwo Czarne
• Wydawnictwo CzuCzu
• Gdańsk Psychological Publishing
• Goyki 3 Art Inkubator
• Instytut Camões
• Wydawnictwo Kameleon
• Wydawnictwo Książkowe Klimaty
• Wydawnictwo Kultura Gniewu
• Wydawnictwo Literackie
• Wydawnictwo Marginesy
• Wydawnictwo Marpress Sp. z o.o.
• Wydawnictwo Mięta
• Muzeum Sopotu / Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna w Sopocie
• Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo NISZA
• Wydawnictwo Obierki
• Wydawnictwo Pauza
• Wydawnictwo Poznańskie
• Wydawnictwo Smak Słowa
• Wydawnictwo Sonia Draga oraz Wydawnictwo Debit
• Publisher timof comics
• Wydawnictwo Tu się czyta
• Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego
• Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej i Miejskiej Biblioteki Publicznej w Gdańsku
• Wydawnictwo Zakamarki
• Wydawnictwo ZNAK

We read in all sorts of places: in gardens, former churches, cafés, art galleries, and on buses. We usually meet at the shipyard, where we started, but we are increasingly keen to venture further afield to other neighbourhoods and even other towns.

So come on, let’s read!

Don’t expect a traditional book signing or a book club. Collective reading is simply an opportunity to get together and exchange energy. Bring your book—whatever it is—put your phone on silent, and read. There are two reading sessions, with a break in between. During the break, you can chat with others, have a coffee, and share your thoughts. But if you would rather just keep quiet, that’s fine, too. This is an event that lets you be yourself.

this is not the time to read alone is an initiative that has been running since 2024, created by Sylwia Bruna and Marek Rogala.

IG: kolektywne.czytanko

Thanks to the book Atlas das Viagens e dos Exploradores by Isabel Minhós Martins and Bernardo P. Carvalho, published in Poland by Dwie Siostry, we will learn the story of Bartolomeu Dias. After getting to know this Portuguese sailor, we will become travellers ourselves, tearing out sections of a large map of the ocean to discover new lands. On these lands, we will draw what we might see, who we might meet, and where we might go.

This promises to be an engaging session exploring two different paths to developing one’s own writing. Both authors emerged from the internet and the book-related sphere, but they represent different sensibilities and themes, as well as different approaches to building relationships with readers. A key question to be discussed is what it means to debut or develop as an author today when one already has an online community, voice, and recognition. Eli will bring the perspective of highly personal writing closely aligned with themes of identity, coming of age, and emotional truth to this conversation, whereas Sławek will share the experience of a book media creator who has transitioned to writing youth literature rooted in the plot-driven, contemporary romance YA genre.

Staged reading of Tiago Rodrigues’ Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, directed by Tomasz Fryzeł, followed by a meeting with the creators and social psychologist Krystyna Skarżyńska.

Hosted by: Aneta Kyzioł

Text: Tiago Rodrigues

Polish translation: Alicja Bzura

Direction: Tomasz Fryzeł

Starring: Justyna Bartoszewicz, Piotr Biedroń, Katarzyna Borkowska, Robert Ciszewski, Maria Kresa, Marek Tynda, Jarosław Tyrański

Text: Tiago Rodrigues

Polish translation: Alicja Bzura

Występują: Tomasz Fryzeł

South Portugal, 2028. Catarina is about to kill her first fascist. It is a rite of passage, steeped in tradition and family lore. A day of celebration, of beauty and death. But when Catarina refuses to kill the hostage, her decision drives a wedge between the family. As ghosts of the past arise, unresolved questions emerge – what is the price of democracy? Is there room for violence in the fight for a better world?

A play by Tiago Rodrigues, the Portuguese actor, playwright and director, one of the most important figures in contemporary theatre and Artistic Director of the Avignon Festival since 2022. The stage production based on the play, directed by Rodrigues himself, was created as a co-production between Lisbon’s Teatro Nacional D. Maria II and the Avignon Festival. The production premiered in Portugal in 2020 and was later presented at the Avignon Festival in 2023 and at PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance in New York in 2024. In September this year, it will be presented at London’s National Theatre.

The play tries to do what I feel is one of theatre’s vital strengths: to propose characters who, through what they think and say and do on stage, and through the way they do it, allow us to think differently about our lives. What we had at the beginning was a family, a questioning of violence’s place in a democratic society, while faced with the threat of antidemocratic thought and action, while faced with the imminence of a dictatorship, and we wanted to raise these issues in a manner that would also challenge ourselves. So that they wouldn’t be appeasing, serving only to confirm what we believe to be our shared values – and which are probably not the values we share, we just believe we share them, and then we’re often surprised by election results and we realise that we may share those values on a more human and personal scale, but on a social scale the interpretation and manipulation of ideas and the shape of our civic involvement often separate us as citizens. So we didn’t want a play that would appease, confirm, or even assume to know what the audience thinks, and what that audience’s beliefs are. We wanted a play that would disquiet, regardless of the convictions of those seeing it.

Tiago Rodrigues

Admission: 16+

Copyright mention: © Tiago Rodrigues/SPA, Lisbon, 2026.

Directed by: Kleber Mendonça Filho (2016), Brasil, 142 min.

The titular Aquarius is a residential building from the 1940s owned by Clara—a former journalist, widow, and mother of three children whom she raised within its walls. Her feisty character comes to the fore when major developers set their sights on the Aquarius; the protagonist refuses to give in to their attempts or intrigues and stands her ground. The music featured in the film adds variety to this work, which serves as a metaphor for the struggle against capitalism.