One of the unexpected highlights of last week’s London Book Fair (and believe us, any highlights are unexpected) was the British Council’s International Young Publisher of the Year Award. The Award has been running for three years now, and is intended to “celebrate the entrepreneurial and leadership ability of a young person (aged between 25 and 35), working in the publishing sector in their own country.”

Ten countries are selected each year, and are represented by a finalist each, who get a ten-day trip to the UK to meet a wide variety of people in the UK book trade, including Bloomsbury CEO Nigel ‘Google Ate My Hamster’ Newton and Canongate bigwig Jamie “I own Scotland” Byng. They then each pitch a book from their respective countries which is currently unpublished in their UK to a select crowd of knackered publishers and wannabe authors at the LBF, and the YP judged most promising goes home with a £7,500 cheque and the promise of a stand at next year’s book fair. (The competition is judged, incidentally, by an independent panel which this year including Gautam Malkani, who STML is rather regretting backing in the great hype race of 2006 - Londonstani ain’t worth it people. Sorry.)

At the pitch session STML attended, the finalists hailed from South Africa, Mexico, Colombia, Lebanon and Thailand. Flippant as we may be, STML found the YP’s presentations both inspiring and slightly frightening (”They’re younger than us!” “Only physically”). There was also a palpable yearning in the audience to be involved in the exciting breaking of new ground that the finalists spoke of, a far cry from the conservative, over-saturated and stagnant book world represented in the rest of the building.

Michelle Matthews, at only 27, is the Publishing Manager of Oshun Books, an imprint of the grand Struik Publishers. Michelle developed and launched the imprint herself in 2004 and has since published a range of books by and for South African women, the first publisher to do so in SA. Check out the 180° collection for what’s hot in South African writing right now.

The multitalented (and, if we may be so crude, rather hot) Alejandro Cruz is the Editor and Director of Hoja por Hoja (Page by Page), the only Mexican publication devoted to current publishing issues. Their fascinating English-language edition produced especially for the LBS contained essays such as “Blooms of a Different Song: Novelties, Brilliance and Lies in Mexican Poetry” and “Pro Wrestlers and Strippers: Books on Art and Photography in Mexico.” Not since 3am at the Razz Club, Barcelona, Summer 2001, has STML been so annoyed we don’t speak Spanish. Alejandro was pitching Hipotermia (Hypothermia) by Álvaro Enrique, a novel in 20 short stories wherein the writer and the writing feature variously “as a man, a father, a voice, a plot, as a horizon, a scheme, a reality.” Published in Spanish by Anagrama-Colofón and recently acquired by Gallimard for the French, English rights should not be (but probably are) far behind. If anyone knows a good translator who’ll work for proofs, please get in touch.

Other pitchers included Carlos Castillo, Literature Editor of Colombia’s increasingly fiction-publishing Editorial Norma, Pharekaew Kaewka, representing Baan Lae Suan Books, the place to go if you want the skinny on Thai interior design, Qasim Al Belushi of Oman heritage press, the Beit Al Zubar Foundation, and the eventual winner, Joanna El Mir, the passionate Creative Director of Lebanese children’s publisher Samir Editeur.

Used to a UK industry in which young and independent publishers are routinely ignored, marginalised and underpaid (OK, we’ll stop now), it was refreshing to see such a group listened to, lauded and rewarded. That the event was entirely set up and run by the British Council, to which organisation all the finalists were clearly extremely grateful, can only serve to bolster the UK’s reputation overseas. This is in stark contrast to the home industry’s habitual blindness to nearly everything that happens outside the boundaries of the Englsih language, but perhaps someone will be brave enough to take one of these publishers up on their offer…