Do you like to read? Do you like to discuss what you read with like-minded people? Or maybe you write yourself (poems, stories, songs, etc.) and would like to show your works to true connoisseurs of the Word? Are you sincerely interested in other authors and are you willing to listen to their opinions, as well as express your point of view about someone’s works? Do you miss lively informal communication in a circle of like-minded people, “bruised” by the muse? If you answered yes to most of the questions, join our literary club.
The open literary club “BOOKPArnas” was created with the aim of supporting and developing modern poetry, prose and art songs in Kokshetau and the Akmola region, promoting literature, and implementing various creative projects related to books and literature.
The founder of the club at the end of 2017 was initially the NGO “Women’s Friendship Center of the World”. Later, the literary club settled in the hospitable walls of the Museum of the History of the City of Kokshetau, where activists of the literary club had previously initiated the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the stay of the writer Anastasia Tsvetaeva in Kokshetau. The club’s initiative group includes well-known poets and publicists, journalists and philologists, local historians and social activists in Kokshetau and beyond.
Among them are the poet Rena Zhumanova (member of the Union of Writers of Kazakhstan), member of the Union of Journalists of the Republic of Kazakhstan Aliya Akhetova, local historian Gulchekhra Perley, philologist Olga Timofeeva, poet Viktor Osipov, prose writer Dana Zhantemirova, journalist Veronica Burda and others. Over the short history of its existence, the literary club, which carries out educational work, has been noted for holding a number of interesting and educational events of a literary and literary-local history nature. Among them are the Tsvetaevsky festivals and bonfires in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. In 2019, the literary club, together with the Museum of the History of the City of Kokshetau, published the brochure “Anastasia Tsvetaeva in Kokshetau”. In 2020, the first poetry party took place, dedicated to the release of a new book of poems by Rena Zhumanova. In 2020, activists of the literary club, together with their Pavlodar colleagues, took part in the competition for the All-Russian Historical and Literary Prize “Alexander Nevsky”, receiving the title of diploma winners for the project “Anastasia Tsvetaeva in Kazakhstan”. The literary club plans to hold creative meetings, round tables, literary evenings, and presentations of new books.
If a book is your bosom friend,
and not just a wonderful present,
if someone lit your heart with a verb
on a thorny and slippery path,
if the inner voice dictates: “Bupa!”* –
You definitely won’t get bored with us.
Where the Kylshakty flows and the Kopa turns blue,
BOOKPArnas peak rises!
• “Bupa!” (Kaz.) – don’t bend, don’t hide.