Articles

The recent years have given us an increased number of poetic debuts by authors from varying age groups. Even though the reader with a pulse on the Lithuanian poetry scene will find little to surprise them, it must be said that the young generation of poets, who were born in the Lithuanian independence era, are […]

Even relatively recently, there were, from time to time, voices in the discourse of literary criticism sighing hopelessly about the present and future of Lithuanian short fiction. Due to a scarcity of published works, the identity and evolution of the Lithuanian short story has been elusive. Be that as it may, over the last decade,

Lithuanian literature awards can be characterized by seasonality. Spring and autumn are a time for poetry, while winter is the season for picking the best books of the year. Of course, seasonality is not the only aspect that allows the classification of literary awards. More importantly, prizes differ in both their function and their meaning.

Just recently, contemplating the newest Lithuanian poetry, I thought of how it accustoms us, persistently, to remember imagination. This means that for a while, poems were dominated by the challenges of life and recurrent descriptions of marginal experiences, which were interpreted by the means of aesthetization and creation of an alternative worldview for them. In

Lithuanian writer Grigory Kanovich has dedicated his life, in his own words, ‘to what has been lost, to what has been destroyed – the small Jewish town.’ His last novel, Shtetl Love Song, out for the first time in English, ‘is, in a sense, a requiem to all such Jewish towns.’ Kanovich is one of Lithuania’s

At first glance, 2016 was a fairly ordinary year in Lithuanian literature: like any year before there was no shortage of books, and like every year it brought expectations and reasons both to grumble and to rejoice depending on the likings and hopes of readers. It seems that  things progressed quietly and consistently, without any

Even though all rules have their exceptions, contemporary criticism still emphasizes that the strength of Lithuanian prose lies in metaphors and poetic qualities and not in developed plots and carefully crafted intrigues, which, nevertheless, have been gaining prominence in the last few decades. It is this type of prose that I call literary prose. Its

Towards the end of the year many of us succumb to the temptation to sum up, generalize, and rate what has been experienced, read, and seen. This text was conceived late in 2016 or maybe very early in 2017, while I was enjoying a cup of coffee with Marius Burokas, the editor of Vilnius Review. Alas,

For Lithuanian poetry, the past decade was one of deeply felt losses. Prominent poets such as Marcelijus Martinaitis and Sigitas Geda passed away. These people were poetic universes from which numerous younger poets found encouragement and inspiration. Martinaitis and Geda, in particular, were hopeful symbols of Lithuanian poetry’s continuity. As for the poets writing today,

Ten years. This is how long it has taken for the following myths to be debunked: that there are no comics in Lithuania, that nobody knows how to create them, that the market is flooded with poor-quality Japanese publications intended for children and teenagers, or by Spiderman and X-men, which are part of pop-culture and possess no artistic