Nelly Klos - New Programme Director of BookForum 2025
Nelly Klos, a cultural manager with over 15 years of experience in leading large-scale projects, has been appointed Programme Director of the 2025 BookForum.
A seasoned project manager and coordinator of major cultural events, Nelly is an expert in international cooperation and creative project management. She has previously worked with the BookForum team in various roles and brings both continuity and fresh vision to the festival.
Nelly’s professional background spans literary festivals, publishing, and intercultural artistic initiatives across Europe. Her experience ranges from national campaigns promoting children’s reading to multimedia projects using augmented reality. A significant part of these initiatives has been developed in partnership with international cultural institutions.
Her long-standing connection with the BookForum began in 2005. Over the years, she has taken on multiple responsibilities within the team — from project manager to Programme Director in 2016.
“BookForum is a unique phenomenon — there’s nothing quite like it in Ukraine,” says Nelly Klos. “I’ve had the privilege of being part of this project for many years. Its impact goes far beyond numbers — beyond the number of events, visitors, or books sold. BookForum is, above all, about meanings that change lives.
Over the past three decades, the festival has helped shape generations of Ukrainians who see books not just as objects but as ways of thinking, feeling, and living. In times of war — and under the challenges posed by AI and propaganda — books help preserve critical thinking, provide support, and offer solace.
BookForum is not just about buying a book — it’s about immersing yourself in the living fabric of culture, witnessing how shared meaning is born, and how literature builds a space of unity. It’s a chance to strengthen your connection to language, to reading, and to identity.
This year, this experience will grow even richer with the return of the Book Fair to the Palace of Arts — a space that will once again become the heart of BookForum. There, in direct contact with books, authors, and the reading community, the feeling of belonging — to culture, to language, to oneself — is renewed.
And this is where the power of cultural diplomacy becomes visible: when artists from different countries speak of Ukraine not through screens, but through their own lived experience. BookForum creates space for that — through encounter, dialogue, and mutual presence. That is why it turns its guests into ambassadors of Ukraine to the world.”
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