Last year only our hearts were at the Bologna Book Fair (we wrote a short piece on the Polish book market for Publishers Weekly), but this time we couldn’t miss the occasion. And so Kamila flew to Bologna as a proud representative of Macadamia Literary Agency, where she met with our current accounts, prospective clients and Polish editors, to whom she passed the hottest news straight from her Bologna meetings.

She found this year’s fair to be interesting, if a little quiet. According to what Kamila heard in her talks with other agents, international publishers are mostly looking for contemporary YA novels (in the vein of John Green’s books) and middle grade series. Fortunately, we happen to have many of these on our lists, to name just a few: Prettyboy by Karen Hattrup (a boy and a girl and a summer full of “first times”; ask Maria for the manuscript) or The Fixer by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Pretty Little Liars meet Scandal; available from Magda) and the super funny Dragon’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans by Joanne Ryder and Laurence Yep (Kamila’s favorite read in a long time).

And only returning from the fair was a bit difficult – directly from the sunny 24ºC (75ºF) to cold, rainy and snowy 5ºC (41ºF) in Warsaw.