News & Events

Fall 2016 Appearances

~ Antanas Sileika

On September 25, The Word on The Street festival is being held at Harbourfront in Toronto and Kim Moritsugu and I will be hosting a day of talks by writers with new books as well as publishing industry professionals.

On September 29, I’ll be running a creative writing talk and introducing new and established writers from the west end of Toronto at The Assembly Hall. The event is free.

During the last week of October, The Humber School for Writers will hold a workshop inside IFOA, and on Wednesday, October 26, I will host a twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the school along with prominent alumni and writing teachers.

As for November and December, I’ll proof the Galleys of my forthcoming memoir, The Barefoot Bing Caller, due out in May, and polish up a novel called Provisionally Yours, a project I have been working on for years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer 2016

~ Antanas Sileika

ECW Logo

My memoir, The Barefoot Bingo Caller, has been more or less put to bed for ECW Press. It will appear in May of 2017. The Lithuanian translation, from Versus Aureus, will appear in the spring of 2017 as well.

I have rewritten my novel, Provisionally Yours, with the help of a good editor and will see his response to it at the end of the summer. This is the espionage novel inspired by the life of Jonas Budrys, the chief of Lithuanian counterintelligence from 1921-1923. His own memoir, Lietuvos Kontrazvalgyba, is an excellent and fast-paced book for those who have the  language.

This gives me time to work on my The Rhyming Assassin, my book about Kostas Kubilinskas, the Dr. Seuss of Lithuania, who murdered a man in order to be permitted to publish children’s books.

I’ll be in Lithuania in August to do research for this book, as well as to speak on my writing at the opening of my wife, Snaige’s, big art show at the Moncys Gallery in Palanga, Lithuania, on August 6.

The summer is a great break from working on the Canadian Writers’ Summit this past June, and preparing for the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Humber School for Writers on October 26 inside the International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront. I’ll have time to get some more words down on the page.

The Resurrection of Buying on Time

~ Antanas Sileika

 

CR Photo

I was pleased ands surprised to see Buying on Time, a collection of short stories I had published in 1997, make the long list for the Canada Reads competition sponsored by CBC radio.

 

I recently came back from Lithuania, where the translation of the book has been short-listed for the Book of the Year competition. That is a people’s choice competition in the final round, so whichever book gets the most votes will win. Anyone who would care to vote for my book is welcome to press the button “įrašyti”, which means “enter” at this link.

 

In the meantime, I am working on editorial notes for my memoir, which will come out in 2017.

 

 

 

 

Fall, 2015

~ Antanas Sileika

Grandson on Back

 

I’ve recently signed a contract for a book of stories to appear with ECW Press in the fall of 2016 or the spring of 2017.

I spent the summer in Lithuania, working in KGB archives in the morning and helping to babysit my grandson some evenings. I also gave two talks at the Santara conference in Alanta, Lithuania. Here is an English translation of one of the talks I gave at the Santara conference on the subject of recent books in English with a Baltic theme.

I’ll be at the Assembly Hall in Toronto with Plum Johnson in October and Lawrence Hill in December.

In the last week in October, I’ll be running the Humber School for Writers workshop inside the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.

After that, for two weeks in November, I will be in Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania, giving a total of seven university lectures on the translations of my books into Lithuanian.

I recently published an Essay called “Fault Lines”  in The Literary Review of Canada. In that essay, I address the controversial proposed Monument to the Victims of Communism in Ottawa.

And among all these activities, I am picking apples and cooking them, building a shed and enjoying the fact that my wife, Snaige, sold out her last art show.

 

 

Desk Versus Nature

~ Antanas Sileika

After a long and difficult winter, spring has finally burst out in Toronto while I am overwhelmed with writing projects that keep me at my desk.

 

See the photo below for where I would rather be.

Blossoms 1

I am rewriting the novel inspired by the memoir of Jonas Budrys, working on a collection of stories, and starting yet another novel inspired by the Rhyming Assassin of Lithuania, Kostas Kubilinskas.

 

The LRC has asked me to work up an essay on Eastern Europe, and I am preparing talk for a conference in Lithuania, Santara Šviesa, which I try to attend every couple of years.

 

One book needs to be blurbed and another finished for my talk, and in the meantime, I wish I could settle down and read Out of Ashes, a new history of Europe, one that has received excellent reviews.

 

Not really complaining, though. Just saying.

 

 

Lithuanian Translation Appears

~ Antanas Sileika

The Lithuanian translation of Underground, called Pogrindis, appeared in Lithuania in 2013.  Here’s a link to an article about the novel’s background (in Lithuanian) as well as an interview with Tomas Donela, who has optioned the film rights. As for the novel itself, it’s available from the publisher at the link here.

For details of the book fair, see my blog post. Also her are a few more links to Lithuanian reviews and profiles: 1, 2, and a third one here. (If the last link doesn’t work, as mine is having trouble, you can find the review at Literatura ir Menas).

Here’s a Lithuanian television interview I did for an operation called “Alchemija.”

Film Option

~ Antanas Sileika

I am so pleased to have sold the option to Underground

to Tomas Donela of Donelos Studija.

I saw his film, Atsisveikinimas, in the European festival that played in Toronto last fall, and was particularly impressed by the cinematography.

It would be great to see this project come together.

 

Update: May 31, 2016:

The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture awarded twenty-eight thousand Euros for development, so a few years later, this project is still alive.

The Return of Buying on Time

~ Antanas Sileika

I was working through galleys of one of my books last weekend, and while this is not so unusual an activity for a writer, what is unusual is that the galleys were for a book that came out in 1997.

Porcupine’s Quill is doing another printing of that collection of stories, which has never ben out of print, I might add.  But the films were so old the proces had to be done again.  There is also an ebook of Buying on Time now available at the Porcupine’s Quill site.

I hadn’t read this material for fifteen years and it was a delight to read it again. I had even forgotten some of the jokes and laughed anew (I don’t usually laugh at my own jokes).  Publisher Tim Inkster warned me to resist the urge to rewrite. That was very hard to do because I am a rewriter by nature.

But Tim did permit me a few corrections – oddball things. The book had already been through four reprints, but I still found a couple of details we had all missed. I called sandwich meat “baloney” for 150 pages, and then somewhere around page 180 I elevated it to “bologna”.

Most writers do not reread their works, and I never do once they are in print, so this was instructive. The lesson is that a work of fiction is never finished to the writer – one could keep on writing forever, but editors and publishers wisely forbid us to do that.

New Review in the Literary Review of Canada

~ Antanas Sileika

Anna Porter has written a thorough and informative review of Underground in the LRC. What a relief to have someone familiar with “the other Europe” doing the writing.

You ccan see the review in the LRC itself or buy an online copy of the journal, but here are a couple of highlights:

… In an uncompromising novel, post-war Lithuania receives its due.

As for Antanas Sileika,…, he has written a tough, uncompromising book and brought those forgotten stories back to life.