Kęstutis Navakas (1964) is one of the most visible Lithuanian poets. He grew up in Kaunas, which figures in his work as his beloved city, and he has been a very active participant in the city’s cultural life. Besides writing for the cultural media, Navakas opened his own bookshop, which was one of the first private initiatives to organise literary events. He has also worked for television as a book reviewer, and has translated quite a lot of poetry from German and English. His own writing is marked by a very playful attitude towards language. He debuted as a poet and has published five collections of poetry, but he later also started writing essays. His writing is elegant, playful, erotic, and full of joie de vivre, with slightly decadent overtones. For him, no word has a single fixed meaning; he associates freely, even phonetically, and frequently uses quotes and references to spice up his writing. ‘I am an adventurer’, he once said in an interview, perfectly characterising both his personality and his work.

Information from The Lithuanian Culture Institute