Suzanne Reid: After the Residency

Vilnius UNESCO City of Literature

Vilnius, the missing piece of the puzzle in my novel

Vilnius, the missing pearl that crystalized the reason for writing it

Vilnius, the missing part of me

Photos of Suzanne Reid

My month as the Vilnius UNESCO City of Literature, Writer in Residence, has been transformational for my novel and quite unexpectedly, my soul. I arrived, for the first time, in the city of my mother’s birth, thinking that writing in a clear unfamiliar place and space, with unencumbered time, would allow me to peacefully carry on with the family centred auto fiction I had been writing. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over these four weeks this extraordinary city would take my hand and allow me to meet myself in my memories starting from the very first steps out of the Užupis Arts Incubator, where I lived, the centre of the republic of Užupis, where history meets art and an ‘everpresent free spirit’. With notebook and camera in hand, I wandered and unwittingly captured my mother’s childhood here until 1944. A time which existed but was never shared.

I saw her in a baby in her pram, a child with her signature ‘you must be joking’ hands on hips and a young lover merging into, or emerging from, a dancing mural. Places she would have been, the hill of Three Crosses, Kalnų Parkas, Vilnia and Neris riverside runs and woodland walks to pick mushrooms, called on me daily at the end of my writing. Vilnius Poker, literary walks, didžkukuliai, saltibarščiai and the national family archives… My journey became hers…

I was enveloped by the city’s history, culture, wisdom and outlook. The warmth of it’s educated and cultured people, the many spoken languages and the generosity of spirit of the families and new friends, shall stay with me forever. The community of writers, past and present, their innate duty to keep truth alive via the written word. Wooden buildings from the past century standing proud next to skyscrapers and creeping commercial constructions. Cultural diversity, humanity, enabling the many to live in Vilnius as part of a greater community. All that is Vilnius, it’s living history, will never leave me.

Thank you, Vilnius UNESCO City of Literature at Literary House and the remarkable Rūta Elijošaitytė-Kaikarė and Marija Mažulė, it has been the most unimaginable opportunity to have been offered this residency and been made so welcome. I am so very grateful.