Lea Vinks Author's Evening

On April 29 at 6:00 PM, the Andrejs Upīts Memorial Museum in Riga, Brīvības Street 38–4, will host Lea Vinks' author's evening. This continues the event series “On the Way to the First Book” begun in 2022, which inspires and supports authors on their literary journey.

Lea Vinks (real name Linda Vītuma) – a writer, prose author, poet, translator, and professional in the field of information technology, has also worked as a midwife and doula. She writes prose and poetry where reality meets fantasy, pain transforms into language, and words become a bridge between the internal and external worlds. Her texts not only express but also open up – leading to emotionally rich, intellectually precise depths. She graduated from the “Literary Academy” prose and poetry workshops under Ronalds Briedis, Ieva Melgalve, Dace Vīgante, and Ivars Šteinbergs. Her first publication appeared in the March 2023 issue of “Newspaper Name” with the story “vita – warms feet – in mine.” Her works can be read in publications such as “Strāva,”
“Newspaper Name,” and “Punctum.” Lea has also turned to the translation and adaptation of works from English and Ukrainian. She is a laureate of the first “Vidzeme Prose Readings” (2024).

“Upon meeting Lea Vinks (real name Linda Vītuma), I could not imagine that this bright, sensitive, witty person writes about grief. She is, of course, not the only author who creates under a pseudonym and seeks words to release immense tension after a personal tragedy and to exist beyond it. However, the way Lea writes is unique. The reader must open their heart and mind, fasten their seatbelt, and, following the cry of love and longing, embark on a journey through multiple time-spaces simultaneously, where the voice of reality intertwines with fantasy and symbolism. One can only gasp in admiration at the depths that reside within a person and eagerly await the first book,” says writer Dace Vīgante.

“Lea Vinks is a mask, but that does not mean that everything in her texts is not as real as something in texts can be. Especially when it comes to how Lea transforms experiences from reality into literary text, enveloping it with Far Eastern motifs and the aesthetics of horror and naturalism. Lea is purposeful and curious, in her stories she intellectually and intuitively dissects the human inner world and makes it clash with the outer world, so that from this clash something new emerges. Surprisingly, this new “creation” by Lea carries a message of hope, even if the starting point of the text is a tangle of emotions stuck in a swamp, from which it seems not so easy to unravel,” says literary scholar, writer, and editor Elīna Kokareviča.

About the event series “On the Way to the First Book”

“For some, the journey to the first book lasts several years. For others, decades. For yet others, possibly the majority of their lifetime. All these people, of different ages, different life and literary experiences, share a goal – to see their poetic or prose texts collected in a book. Perhaps not everyone achieves their goal, some give up halfway, remaining in memory as the young and promising, who, after a brief shine, fade into literary oblivion. Others hold on to the belief that the journey is more important than the goal – the current will carry them where it is meant to,” says Ilze Puķe, the director of the Andrejs Upīts Memorial Museum, about the event series concept.

“Who are these people, not all of whom are beginners, often labeled as new authors? What is so alluring about this process – adding another book to the vast global library? What challenges arise from the fact that literature is currently very modestly represented in the Latvian media? Perhaps the journey really is more important than the goal?

The museum's event series “On the Way to the First Book” seeks to answer these and many other questions. It is also intended as support for new or relatively new authors,” says Puķe.

Entrance fee: 2.00 euros.