Φιλαναγνωσία [Filanagnosia] in Greek means the love of reading. The title ΦυλΑναγνωσία: Φυλ from φύλο [fýlo] – gender, and ανάγνωση [anagnosi] – reading, is a play on words taken from the homophony of the word φύλο with φίλο- (in English -phil or -phile), a suffix which means enthusiastic, love of (a given object), in this case the first element of the compound Greek word φιλαναγνωσία.
Reading Gender is the message that this editorial project wants to convey.
I’m going to start a publishing house with books that will be addressed mainly to children, with the aim of developing critical thinking and acting as a tool in the prevention of gender-based violence and discrimination. This experience starts by publishing a silent book that illustrates our idea.
The idea was born after many attempts, without result, to create a bibliography in the Greek language, useful for the development of an educational program on gender. After thorough research in the libraries and in the catalogues of the publishing houses, we found an almost complete lack of books that are gender positive, written or translated into Greek! Conclusion? The publishing market needs to be enriched with new ideas and material.
I interpreted the result of my research as a challenge that I accepted with enthusiasm. I shared the idea with my collaborators and so we created a team and we set our goals:
Our publishing activity will focus on the translation and publication of illustrated books from around the world that present a wide and infinite imagination. The choice of books is based on two fundamental criteria: the quality of images and stories and plurality, i.e. the absence of both stereotypes and the binary representation of gender, and the quality of images and stories.
To make our mission even more effective, we will develop an augmented reality application to create interactive content for each book we are going to publish.
The entrepreneurial activity of our publishing house is based on three principles: the implementation of ethical contracts, to increase visibility of the translator’s work and the creation of new collaborations with professionals from Cyprus and Greece.
We believe that books are one of the few “places” where everyone, especially children, can meet unique, authentic, different people, with whom they can identify or not, without being judged.
Telling stories about bodies, genders, relationships and sexuality puts developing people in a position to discover themselves and make choices that are truly their own.
Illustrated books are one of the most effective ways to develop and promote critical thinking by understanding that nature actually follows a diversity spectrum. We believe that these books can become an even more powerful tool, as the stories and experiences told are shared interculturally through translated literature, developing and enhancing the understanding of common values, self-knowledge and respect. That’s why we want our books to be a source of inspiration.
THE TEAM
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