Mindaugas Kvietkauskas

Prof. dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas is a literary scholar and translator, professor of comparative literature at Vilnius University. In 2019–2020, Kvietkauskas served as Lithuania’s Minister of Culture. Before becoming a minister, Kvietkauskas worked at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore in Vilnius and managed this institution in 2008-2018. Kvietkauskas acquired his Ph.D. at the Department of Lithuanian Literature, Vilnius University, and studied Yiddish Language and Literature at the Oxford University‘s Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. His main areas of research are multinational literary modernism and urban culture in Lithuania and East-Central Europe. He is the author of two academic monographs, a collection of poetry, and a book of literary essays “Uosto Fuga” (“The Port Fugue”). Kvietkauskas has translated several books from the Yiddish and Polish languages, including works by famous poets Abraham Sutzkever, Moyshe Kulbak, and Czeslaw Milosz. He has researched and translated Holocaust diaries written by Lithuanian Jewish children – „Vilnius Ghetto Diary“ by Yitskhok Rudashevski and „Unlocked Diary“ by Matilda Olkinaitė. He has also researched the work of the famous Lithuanian Jewish avant-garde photographer Moyshe Vorobeichic-Moï Ver and collaborated on the preparation on his reprint photobook „The Ghetto Lane in Wilna/ Hommage à Moï Ver“ (2019).

Foto: Privat