Littera Baltica
LITTERA BALTICA is a non-profit, non-governmental organization which arranges meetings open to writers and translators in the Baltic area, defined as Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Kaliningrad, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, Samiland, Sweden and Ukraine.

In 1995, a group of people representing various Finnish literary organisations decided to organize an international meeting for literary people around the Baltic Sea. The first LITTERA BALTICA conference was held in Turku, Finland, in 1996. Since then, conferences have been arranged in Turku on a regular basis every second year.

The LITTERA BALTICA conferences provide an opportunity for writers and translators from the Baltic Sea region to meet their colleagues and to open up new contacts and channels of interaction.The meetings also aim to provide a first-hand notion of literature currently being written in the area, and an inspiring forum for discussing issues in literature and writing. A further aim is to build a network of writers and translators in the Baltic area, in order to promote the translation and distribution of literature in the participating countries.

LITTERA BALTICA meetings last 2-3 days. Each meeting has a specific theme, and ten to twelwe invited guest speakers each give a short presentation of their views. The presentations are followed by general discussion. The number of participants usually stays around 40-45, which helps make the atmosphere in the open discussions informal and relaxed. In order to cut across linguistic barriers, the main conference language (foreign to all participants) is English.

In addition to the presentations and the collegial discussions between writers and translators, each conference includes a part that is open to the general public, usually in the form of a reading session where participants read excerpts of their work in their native tongue, and translations into English, Swedish or Finnish are presented to the audience.

The constitutive meeting of LITTERA BALTICA was held in 2003. The work of planning and organizing the meetings is carried out by an appointed board, representing the major Finnish literary organisations both locally and nationally. LITTERA BALTICA has established long-term partnerships with many literary and cultural organizations. On the operational level, the meetings are made possible by funding from organizations in both the private and public sector.

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