Summer Literary Seminar in Lithuania
By Zachary Solomon
Zachary Solomon is a freelance writer in Brooklyn. (David Levy)
The relationship between Jews and literature is as indelible as the very concept of narrative. For thousands of years, Jews have sought to explain their heritage through story-telling, to reconcile their victories and tragedies by making sense of the world through the written word.
A self-contained supplement to Summer Literary Seminars’ Lithuania program, and set in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, Jewish Lithuania seeks the same. Designed for anyone with a keen interest in Jewish life, personal and historical narrative, and Litvak culture, SLS-Jewish Lithuania aims to become absorbed in the past, present, and future of what was once the cultural, philosophical, spiritual, and intellectual center of pre-Shoah Jewish life in Europe. Through deep relationships with Vilna’s Jewish community, richly consisting of Jewish and Holocaust museums, historians, and lecturers, our Jewish Lithuania program probes at the heart of the city, still beating resolutely throughout the same streets that once comprised the Vilna Ghetto. Beyond Vilnius, Jewish Lithuania explores many other nearby sites of great significance to Jewish history, such as the cities of Žagarė, Kaunas, and Ponary, the site of the Ponary massacre.
Featuring a robust faculty consisting of, among others, talented writers whose work engages with Jewish identity, politics, and life, Jewish Lithuania understands the meaningful, paramount importance of story. Some of those writers that we have brought to Lithuania include Ed Hirsch, Phillip Lopate, Steve Stern, Lynn Tillman, Ariana Reines, Robin Hemley, Peter Cole, Adina Hoffman, Linor Goralik, Vitaly Komar, and Sergei Gandlevsky, among others.
The program runs from July 13 – July 26, 2014. For a chance to win a full-ride to the program, please be sure to enter our 2014 SLS Literary Contest (deadline: February 28, 2014), featuring fiction, poetry and non-fiction categories, and judged by world-renowned writers. The deadline to apply for SLS-Jewish Lithuania is June 15, 2014.
Please be sure to forward this to any interested parties. And, of course, if you have any questions, please contact Zachary Solomon at [email protected].
See you in Vilnius!
Please be sure to forward this to any interested parties. And, of course, if you have any questions, please contact Zachary Solomon at [email protected].
See you in Vilnius!
