Laimonas Breidis

Laimonas Briedis is a writer and scholar of history, literature and the geographical imagination of Lithuania. A native of Vilnius (Lithuania), he has lived for most of his adult life in Vancouver (Canada) where he completed a doctoral degree in cultural geography at the University of British Columbia. He received his postdoctoral degree in history at the University of Toronto. His research methodology and literary investigation explores the deepest cultural strands of Vilnius in relationship to different parts of the world. His creative output stretches from charting a GIS anchored digital map of the multilingual literature of Vilnius to examining the ramifications of being bi-local; placing questions related to urban history, war politics, migration, diaspora, translation and memory at the core of his work. Laimonas is the author of many books and articles, and he has presented his ideas and work at many venues, including, Tedx, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, and the British Library. Among his non-fiction books is the bestselling Vilnius: City of Strangers, surveying the intellectual history of European culture through the changing political and linguistic landscape of Vilnius. The book has been translated into several languages, including, Lithuanian, German, Chinese, Russian and Portuguese (Brazil).

Foto: Litauiska Kulturinstitutet