20 September 2024

Free Creative Writing Workshops with Laima Vince

We invite you to a free creative writing workshop with US author Laima Vince at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.

The author writes and speaks both Lithuanian and English. The main language of the workshop will be English, but instructions will also be available in Lithuanian. You will be able to choose the language in which you wish to practise creative writing.

Register here.

Writing a novel

Maybe you dream of writing a novel, but don't know where to start? How to structure the story? How to create and describe characters? How to generate ideas? How do you gather the material for a novel? This creative workshop will help you answer these questions. While creating texts, we will learn how to structure the story and describe the characters. We will work with the characters we have created and write dialogues and scenes.

29 September, 15:00–17:00 in the Event Area of the National Library, 3rd floor.

Writing therapy and memory mapping

In this workshop you will learn how to use the art of creative writing as a tool to overcome anxiety and stress. You will find that writing can enrich you with new insights and that you can find ways to solve problems by listening to yourself. In this workshop you will learn some writing techniques that you can adapt to your personal needs.

Explore your inner world by delving into childhood memories, drawing a personal memory map and writing a memoir or essay about this period of your life. These exercises help to tap into deep experiences and unleash creativity. We will try different stages of creating a memoir text: free writing, drawing, text structuring, memoir writing, editing, text discussion.

2 October, 18:00–20:00 in the Event Area of the National Library, 3rd floor

The art of translation

Can artificial intelligence really replace the author? Can it replace the translator? What do we lose when we give a creative text to Google Translate for translation and then to Chat GPT for editing? In this workshop we will test different translation techniques and analyse our results.Bring some of your favourite poetry/fiction in Lithuanian and English to the workshop. We will translate, play with texts, compare our results with artificial intelligence and draw our own conclusions. If you like to "play" with language, if you would like to translate fiction (or if you are already a translator), or if you simply want to understand more about the relationship between writing techniques and artificial intelligence, then this workshop is for you.

2 October, 18:00–20:00 in the Statehood Centre of the National Library, 2nd floor.

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Dr Laima Vincė Sruoginis is an author, academic, and lifelong member of the North American Lithuanian diaspora.

She has published over twenty books in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom. She holds a PhD in Humanities from the University of Vilnius, an MFA in Writing from Columbia University, an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of New Hampshire, and a BA in English and German Literature from Rutgers University. She is the recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, a PEN Translation Fund Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Award in Poetry, an Association of the Advancement of Baltic Studies Book Subvention Grant, and a dissertation fellowship, among others. She teaches in the English department at the University of Southern Maine.

Briefly about the event

Date and time

29 September, 15:00–17:00
2–3 October, 18:00–20:00

Place

29 September, 2 October – Event Area, 3rd floor
3 October – Statehood Centre, 2nd floor

Attendance

please register here

Organiser

American Space at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Important

the event may be photographed and/or filmed
the main language of the workshop is English

More information

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