Antanas Sileika (Antanas Šileika) is a Canadian writer, the author of six books of fiction and a memoir, with an eighth book, The Death of Tony, published by Stonehewer Books in spring of 2024.
The Death of Tony – an autobiographical essay, 2024
Some Unfinished Business – novel, 2023
Provisionally Yours – novel, 2019
The Barefoot Bingo Caller – memoir, 2017
Underground – novel, 2011
Woman in Bronze – novel. 2004
Buying on Time – stories, 1997
Dinner at the End of the World – novel, 1994
His books have been nominated for the City of Toronto and Leacock awards, as well as selected among the best books of the year by Canada’s Globe and Mail. He has been translated into Italian, Chinese, and Lithuanian and the translation of The Barefoot Bingo Caller won book of the year in Lithuania in 2018 (as Basakojis bingo pranšėjas). Provisionally Yours was made into a feature film in Lithuania in 2023 (as Laikinai jūsų).
Antanas writes in English; he is of Lithuanian heritage and much of the action of his novels and stories takes place in Lithuania, a place he has described as a very small stage upon which very dramatic actions have taken place.
In 1977, Antanas moved to Paris for two years where he worked as part of the editorial collective of the expatriate literary journal, Paris Voices, run from the upstairs room of the bookstore, Shakespeare and Company.
Upon his return to Canada in 1979, he began teaching English at Humber College and working as a co-editor of the Canadian literary journal, Descant, where he remained until 1988.
He became involved through journalism with Lithuania’s restitution of independence during the fall of The Soviet Union 1988-1991, and for this activity he received the Knight’s Cross medal from the Lithuanian government in 2004.
A past winner of a national magazine award, he retired in June of 2017 as the director for the Humber School for Writers in Toronto.
Photo by Liudas Masys