Lithuania and Literature
American writers should visit places where people read
Sveiki!
I am a person between cultures. Born and raised Lithuanian in Texas, I moved to NYC in my twenties and felt comfortably accepted. NYC allowed me to earn an MFA (my thesis was a novel set in Lithuania in 1985 with an American main character) and simultaneously I can present my books and stories (written in English) bilingually ( NYC has a Lithuanian Art Gallery). NYC accepts us all - it is, after all, the city made up of individuals. The more interesting you are, the better you fit in because NYC might not have one of you yet.
But this week I was in Vilnius. This is a city that has itself had more identities than your teenager. The airport alone is reflective of these constant and ever-shifting changes. You arrive into a beautifully maintained building with high European ceilings and lovely balconies.
You depart from a Zaha Hadid designed terminal with a lounge that feels more like a library than an airport - there is literature freely available to read (and being read!!) in a naturally lit room with sound-muting walls in lovely wood grain. (Also the literature is not JUST in Lithuanian, though the City of Vilnius professes itself to be the City of Literature on the sign—there are books from various languages represented as well as a terrific design-award-winning local literary journal in English.)
Notably: there are no screens. There is one gigantic departures sign that is easily visible but not moving or making noise. The music is low. Someone is sleeping curled up on an ottoman. Families keep coming upstairs and the kids fall silent, reverent, and walk over to the enormous bookshelf where lovely children’s books are on the bottom shelf. People are on business calls but they are cupping their hands over their mouths as though in a library.
And that’s just one example of how Vilnius blends past and present in one place.
I’ve been here a week. The first days were purely social, visiting old friends and my brother in Kaunas. (We did a little touristy walking through some forests, some archeological digs, we ate at a Michelin restaurant in a park. It’s Pride week; we did an architectural tour of a 1928 apartment designed and implemented by a gay couple married to beards who were sisters in separate apartments in the basement, and I went to some nightclubs to dance). I find Kaunas a liveable, lovely city.
But Vilnius! First of all, you rarely hear Lithuanian spoken. Maybe one in five groups is speaking exclusively Lithuanian. Massive amounts of English (not just American and British but accented globally), there is a significant amount of Russian (though Russian businesses carefully announce they are anti-Putin with signs at the door), and then a smattering of other languages - Asian tourists in pairs and quartets, a few Black folk here and there, mostly solo or in French-speaking groups, and I even saw a small cluster of Muslim women in hijab.
Everyone is relocated, interning, touring, traveling, visiting, conferencing, doing business, showing off to clients—it’s a vibrant, busy, endlessly entertaining mecca of hotels and restaurants (there are 28 Michelins in Vilnius alone!). The bars are hilarious and of all sorts: Nick and Nora and Nomads both of which greet you in English and serve familiar drinks with local ingredients (at both places the whole menu is 12Euros per crafted cocktail—I had a drink made of a Thyme Liqueur at Nick & Noras, while Nomads creates drinks after songs on their vinyl albums). There is a chain of Piana Vysna bars that serve only a particular alcoholic cherry wine which is either Polish or Russian. Meanwhile there are also dozens of casual craft beer bars mostly with outdoor seating.
But amid all the drinking and eating I was at a literary conference!
WRITING
Truly it has been a fascinating trip - the first conference, in Croatia, was so American it hurt - intended to inspire writers to allow themselves to write their very most marketable and bestselling work, to teach us to gather thousands if not millions of fans on social media and to become a known brand that readers eagerly follow and hungrily read. And now, the end of this trip was a Forum for Lithuanian Writers of the Diaspora. There were about 35 of us at this tri-annual conference, and we shared experiences of publishing and presenting in our various countries—no three participants were from the same country and where we shared a country we were from differing parts of it.
For example, I represented New York City, and the only other person from the United States was based in Florida. There were authors from Italy, Paris, southern France, Great Britain, Mexico (!), Luxembourg, Australia (Darwin!!), the Netherlands, and so forth - many from all over. All with similar stories of their host country finding Lithuania too small and too weird to pay much attention to it. (It is embarrassing to admit that I didn’t even tell them that it’s not Lithuania that is ignored in America, it is literally every single other country - we don’t read our own American-written literature, nor can we agree what that even means or IS in this country. Writers are busy trying to sell, sell, sell.
Particularly now that the ruling party has gone all-in to seeking profit and treating the government “like a business”, American culture has become just another product to sell. And not one with a history of ROI.
So how fascinating to end my week in Vilnius with a visit with a woman who works in the US Embassy. She had not heard of this international event but said how interested she was by it - I suppose being overlooked works both ways. At the Writer’s Union, its president responded to a question about why there were not more local writers for us to meet with the same answer we given in the US - “No one goes to readings anymore….no one goes to anything. You have to treat every event like it is their personal birthday with direct invitations and follow up calls or no one is going to attend anything at all.”
As authors we feel overlooked, but perhaps part of this is that we just don’t take the time to reach out individually. We are overwhelmed with posting to groups and on social media to our followers. News is ever-shifting and distracting and invades social media so strongly that you just can’t focus on your calendar, you’re too busy worrying about your job, your kids, your city, your friends in other cities…
I can tell you that as a follower myself - I don’t much read my feed. I am too busy posting. Remember the mailbox? The physical thing at the end of a driveway that had only marketing and correspondence? And next to it was a box for the newspaper (or the news came from the TV or thrown on your doorstep) — my point is that news and marketing/invitations came in separate places once.
A little individual attention — maybe that’s what we have to return to.
So let me invite you all individually (since I have your attention) - I’m hosting an in-person event in Lower Manhattan on June 17th at 8pm, Speakeasy-style. It’s social. A small party. We will meet downtown at a certain location between 7:45 and 8pm and then you’ll be escorted to a secret art gallery where two incredible authors, V Efua Prince and Ethan Rutherford, will present their works and hang out with us and chat. Whole thing lasts an hour, there will be a happy-hour priced wine selection and free yummies by La Parisienne. Tuesday June 17 - Do join me!! RSVP here.
RANDOM FINAL THOUGHT
The upcoming party sounds like fun! I'm far away, but I hope the guests have a fabulous time.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, your walks…