As far back as I can remember myself, I was always writing. Words, lines, little poems, short stories. I liked writing messages, I would give them to people I knew or to strangers, for example, to someone I would meet on the train or in a bus station. I’ve written a lot of letters in my life. And quite early I started creating books, they were unique copies. I would give them as a gift to dear people. I would type the text on my old typing machine, cut the papers and glue it, I would make collages and draw things, stick photos, and draw on them. Different things. I created quite a lot of those. I wrote articles for cultural magazines. People kept asking me: why don’t you write a book? A real, a printed one. And once I did. Luckily, my first published book was a success and so it gave me confidence to continue.

The most important issues I want to talk about in my work are friendship, love, life, and death. Environmental protection, traumas, loneliness, humanity, resilience, simple daily stories, darkness, light, originality, uniqueness. Daily life and fantasy world, dreams.  Other realities, lives, worlds, mysteries, holes, wells, secret gardens. And so much more...

The power of literature

I witness the power of literature talking about painful and important subjects. The books are silent, but they speak in a loud voice or even scream. They can be deep as the deepest sky, and say long as the longest roads, they can talk without words, and they can be a shelter to those who are in need, and they can guide us through the night, and they remain to witness when we die. And at the same time, I realize that when your house is being bombed literature will not save you.

Books surely unite people, they are good tools to discover, to learn more. A book can become a friend, can be our guide. When you open a book, you open yourself up to the world. And then of course you feel united with other people, even if they live very far and they are different from you. At least while reading the distance disappears, sometimes the book totally absorbs you, you can identify with some character. I see us all, gathered in Guadalajara Book Fair, exchanging our experiences, and inspiring one another. I imagine that new books will be born from our meeting, from traveling, discovering. New ideas, new visions of how to live in this quite shattered world, how to embrace it all together, to protect it.

So far only one of my books was translated in Spanish (translator Jordana González-Jonkus, publishing house Impedimenta). It’s called Haiku siberiano, and it tells a story of my dad when he was a little boy and together with his family was deported to Siberia in 1941. Soviets occupied Lithuania and they started deporting people. A lot of families were deported from home. A lot of people died there, far away in exile. In my book I’m telling a surviving story, how this little boy Algis affronts the rude reality, how he manages to see light in this very dark situation. There are also other characters who teach us beautiful lessons of life, love, friendship, and surviving.

Dreaming to come to Latin America and Mexico

First, I have to say how incredibly happy I am to be invited. I’ve been dreaming for a long time to come to Latin America and very much to Mexico. I always liked Mexican arthouse cinema; I’ve watched quite a few Mexican documentaries. It seems to me that I know this country a bit, like I’ve visited it in my dreams and I’m eager to see how much it corresponds to my vision. I’m happy that people come to book fairs, that it becomes a big fiesta of Life, because books are celebrating Life not only in treated subjects, but in mirroring our world. I can imagine how the feria turns like a merry-go round or flows like a big river, but we still can stop and meet and talk. I see it as a wonderful opportunity to exchange. Exchange ideas and energies. I’m grateful to the organizers and to all the guests.