The sixth international literary festival "Vilnius lapai" begins on Thursday in Vilnius.
The focus of this year's festival is Nordic literature, so visitors will have a unique opportunity to meet invited writers from Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, the organizers announced.
"The Baltic Sea not only separates us and the Scandinavian countries, but also unites us. Reading Scandinavian literature, for example, the books of Sofi Oksanen, the main guest of this year's festival, we can notice that the same and very relevant problems for us - the Soviet era, its legacy and traumas - have an impact on the other side of the sea as well. This year, this is exactly what we want to analyze - how the same problems are visible here and on the other side of the Baltic", said Rūta Kačkutė, the initiator and manager of the festival.
According to the organizers, the big intrigue of this year's festival is that two Lithuanian authors will read excerpts from their new, unpublished or just published books.
One of them - Marius Ivaškevičius - will read excerpts from his new, as yet unpublished novel "Tomas Mūras", it will appear in bookstores next February. The second, Rolandas Rastauskas, will read excerpts from his latest work "Venice Live".
Jo Nesbo, one of the most famous Scandinavian detective authors, promises to participate in the event remotely.
The novelty of the festival is dialogues between writers. Estonian writer Maarja Kangas and Belgian writer, playwright and actress Genevieve Damas will invite to the first dialogue about women as writers and about feminist literature in general.
"Vilniaus lapai" will also retain the components of the festival already loved by the audience: "Literarium" with Aldona Vilutyte will delight with performances and poetry experiments, children and young people will be invited to creative workshops on the topic of comics and graphic novels, which will be led by Akvilė Magicdust, a comic creator already known to Lithuanians and author of comics , psychologist Tatiana Goldberg from Denmark. The tradition of showing a screen adaptation of one of the presented literary works will be continued.
The festival "Vilnius lapai" has been held since 2016. It is organized by the Lithuanian Reading and Cultural Literacy Association together with its partners.
