Literature Without Borders is non-governmental non-profit project promoting the dialogue between different national literary (especially poetry) traditions and authorial communities. Our main activities include the residence for poets and translators in Ozolnieki, Latvia and publishing the books of poetry and poetic prose, primarily translated (including the works of our residents).
20.07.2024
Russian poetry magazine Vozdukh (Air) is now published in Latvia. Its first issue produced by Literature Without Borders was celebrated in Berlin on July 12.
20.03.2024
The second presentation of the book of selected poems by the Ukrainian poet Yuri Tarnavsky in Russian translations by Dmitry Kuzmin took place in Tallinn on March 15.
Present-day writing is preconditioned with freedom of creative endeavour as well as with involvement in unlimited dialogue of persons and cultures. Our mission is to assist the authors in reaching each other and their readers through collaborative work on translations and multilingual books.
We are especially concerned in Russian literature that is expected to survive hodiernal political disaster and pave the way to post-totalitarian future.
Literature Without Borders is a successor project for Vavilon/ARGO-RISK, the organizational hub for the newest innovative Russian literature, active in Moscow from 1989. Since 2015 we work in Latvia.
In Ozolnieki, a village located in 40 minutes commute from the capital city of Latvian Republic, two cozy apartments named after two great poets, the Russian Ossip Mandelstam and the Latvian Aleksandrs Čaks, are in wait for the authors and translators. Opening: Spring 2016.
Guests from different countries are welcome for creative work based on cooperation and dialogue: translation, mutual reflection, other collaborative projects. Texts produced in this residence enjoy priority being considered for our publishing program.
Martha Kelly is a literary scholar from the United States born in 1977. In our residence she in June 2017 worked on her study about Olga Sedakova's poetry and public appearance.
Galina Rymbu was born in 1990 and settled in Lviv, Ukraine, in 2018. Her poetry is published in many languages, and in 2017 she was declared winner of the first International festival “Poetry without borders” in Riga. In our residence Galina Rymbu in August 2019 translated from Belarusian Valzhyna Mort's collected poems.
We deal mostly with present day poetry and nonmainstream prose. Our editions are printed in limited amount of copies for circulating mainly in Baltic countries, Russia, Ukraine and other Post-soviet states.
Our series of original Russian books follows the pattern of the book supplement to Vozdukh poetry magazine (started in 2005) in representing actual Russian writing as a multidimensional variety of poetical languages.
Our books of translations are focused mostly at powerful authorial personalities carrying on a distinct message of his/her national culture comprehensible even in translation.
Russian books
Translations
Latvian books
We are ready to cooperate with national and international institutions and media interested in supporting innovative writing in different languages.
© Literature Without Borders (Latvia), 2016
