Jūrmala is a sea resort city in Latvia, breathing under pine umbrellas on a stretch of land between river Lielupe and the Baltic Sea. In 2018 I have opened Sea Library here in Jūrmala. Come and look!
Nine books added to the Sea Library in first two weeks of 2020. Thanks to kind donators and writers from Australia, United States and England, and a couple I bought myself.
Kiran and Tom collaborated more than once before, blending their imagination and skills to create unique universes. Even now they are working on a joint book, which is still secret but will feature a lighthouse and a Greenland shark. I interviewed them together, although each was on a different continent when I received their answers.
2019 was incredibly inspiring year, Sea Library is a miracle that attracts other miracles. I learned to swim properly in 2018 and last year spent nine months in water. I met two dogs, Yoko and Zigzig, both are my friends now. And the community of sea lovers in the library! I loved 2019. I am ready for a wonderful 2020. Let’s go!
I live; I die; the sea comes over me; it's the blue that lasts.
Virginia Woolf
“Walking by the sea is one of my favourite activities – sounds, colours, smells and temper, always different, always changing, affect me. I’m meditative, exhilarated, reflective, creative. It makes me feel how comforting the change could be.” Elina Ruka
As a companion piece to the first of our essays by Anna Iltnere about literary seaside houses – Shruff End from “The Sea, The Sea” by Iris Murdoch – we present an interview with Miles Leeson, lead editor of the Iris Murdoch Review.
In the first of a new series of essays on seaside houses from literature, Anna Iltnere, founder of the Sea Library on Latvia’s Baltic shore, takes us to Shruff End from Iris Murdoch’s novel “The Sea, The Sea”. Each essay will be about a different house, illustrated by the artist Katrina Gelze.
