Gegužes 15-17 d. Kopenhagoje vyks literatūros festivalis ”CphLitt09”. Jame lankysis garsi lietuvių rašytoja Danutė Kalinauskaitė.

Danute Kalinauskaitė was born in 1959. She is a graduate of Vilnius University, Faculty of Philology, where she studied the Lithuanian language and literature. The author published her first book of short stories in 1987. The debut was welcomed by both the critics and the readers. However, she suddenly retired, from the literary world and kept silence for a long time. Why she has been absent from literature for almost two decades? “I simply lived”, the writer says and cites the words of the poet and essayist Kęstutis Navakas that “silence is also an excellent form of self-expression”.

Since 2003, Kalinauskaitė‘s short stories have begun appearing in the press, and finally resulted in a book You Never Know which   was instantly noticed by critics and readers: You Never Know was unanimously selected to be among the five best books of the year, the book has won the prestigious Lithuanian Writers' Union Prize, as well as the Prize of the Lithuanian Literature Institute, i.e. the critics prize. They state that this book has positioned Danutė Kalinauskaitė among the foremost masters of the word and has proved her to be one of the most important contemporary Lithuanian prose-writers.

The literary critic Jūratė Sprindytė said about Danutė’s work:”The writer knows how to take a good look at everyday things, and the simplicity of people, and their persistently being by themselves and for themselves. Things have tangible physical state: forms, smells, colours, textures, and names, blades of grass, vegetation, household utensils and gloomy relics. The power of all sensitivities is accentuated, especially, unexpectedly, the power of smells. [...] In her book our changeable post-Soviet life reveals itself with all the mysteries and joys of émigrés and entrepreneurship, the talents of those who remained here, or the neuroses of men who were given the sack. A good short story turns a glance from itself back towards reality, reminding us that life goes on, and that there are lots of insoluble and unavoidable things in it. [...] Another important thing which makes Kalinauskaitė’s writing so good is the amount of artistic information in a small cell of the text, where every metaphor, word and detail is exact and well thought-out”. 

Danutė Kalinauskaitė says: "I can live without writing, but I can’t live without air, water, or sleep. However, writing is the great miracle of my life“. Currently, she is writing her third book.