About Us
April is an international residency programme for everyone who writes: novelists and essayists, critics, editors and their magazines, performers and scriptwriters, artist-writers and, of course, poets, sometimes even ghostwriters.
April is located in Trakai, a picturesque lake city 30 km away from Vilnius. In her monograph Narrated Trakai (Papasakoti Trakai, 2019), Dr Lina Leparskienė, a researcher at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, reflects on Trakai as a place of contradictions, fantasies and everyday life. She discusses this historical city as if caught between the contradictions of historical grandeur and provincial everydayness, the multitude of national identities and the looming aggression of the landscape in folkloric tales, unique gardens almost submerged in the lakes, noteworthy Trakai cucumbers, the wooden Trakai, the brick Trakai, a great bunch of boredom, and the economic hardship that has accompanied the city’s development.
The residency is suited to local and international authors who use literary expression in their creative practices professionally and are not afraid to experiment with text forms, language, or genre. April offers writers the chance to work within Trakai’s unique environment, delve deeper into the topics of their research and local context, familiarise themselves with the contemporary cultural scene in Lithuania and its established and upcoming participants, and develop new work – whether that is a chapter of a forthcoming book, a translation of their own or others’ writing, poems or essays, performance scripts, diaristic notes, the perfect title, a magazine, or many things yet unthought.
Selected authors will be given the opportunity to live and work in Trakai, in studios set up on the shores of Lake Galvė. Writers will be provided with the conditions to implement individual projects, and, if they wish, actively involve themselves in the cultural scenes of Trakai and Vilnius. The programme also provides any necessary professional creative (curatorial, editorial) and expert consultations (translation, proofreading). April will also run a public programme with readings, performances, talks and discussions, special film screenings, and educational programmes by our guests and residents.
An open call for the residency is announced once or twice a year. Starting in June 2026, up to 20 contemporary authors will be accepted for residencies (between 2 weeks and 2 months): 10 artists or collectives will join the programme by invitation, and 10 will be selected through an open call announced in May 2026.
Participants will be selected by the international Selection Panel and the April team. Applications for the very first competition will be evaluated by writer Akvilina Cicėnaitė, curator and writer Raimundas Malašauskas, curator, editor, and critic Yana Foqué, and poet and playwright Vaiva Grainytė.
The residency programme was dreamt up by Danutė Gambickaitė, Vitalija Jasaitė, and Boris Symulevič, and is run by VšĮ Artnews.lt.
Partners: Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Union (LTMKS), Vilnius UNESCO City of Literature, Vilnius Review magazine.
