Latvian Literary Journals: Celebrating Loneliness on Valentine’s Day

Four Latvian print magazines – the literary magazine “Strāva“, the philosophical magazine “Tvērums”, the avant-garde magazine “Avīzes Nosakums” and the art and literature magazine “Asalwaysunknown” (“AAU”) – are organizing their first ever “Loneliness Festival” on February 14th, reports Latvian Radio.

The event is designed as an act of solidarity, highlighting the lack of support for cultural periodical publishers.

The series of cultural events will be open for free throughout the day on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, at the KK von Stricka villa, the event organizers say.

The event will feature an opportunity to purchase publications and merchandise dedicated to literature, art, and thought, as well as participate in various other activities. Expect literary readings, opening ceremonies for new magazine issues, performances, a “Loneliness Cafe”, a poetry disco, a printing workshop, a psycho-performance “Session with Publishers. Dirty Laundry”, and concerts.

“This event is organized by joining forces of four print cultural media, thus the “Loneliness Festival” is an act of solidarity – it is a resistance to the feeling of lack of support that publishers of cultural periodicals regularly face,” the organizers say.

“The “Loneliness Festival” will also be open to a wide variety of attitudes towards loneliness – it will be possible to declare it by proudly defending the right to be a loner, it will be possible to reduce it by participating in a dating event, and it will be possible to reflect on it by experiencing how loneliness is actualized in art.

On the Latvian Radio program “Cultural Rondo”, the organizers of the festival – “Strāvas” editor Ivars Šteinbergs, “Avīzes Nosaukus” editor-in-chief Valters Liberts, and “AAU” creative director Katrīna Juhna – talked about the importance of cultural documentation, the problems of the industry, and the goals of the festival.

According to Juhna: “Anything that falls into a cultural niche – whether it’s philosophy, music, sculpture, or painting – there are people in those niches who have stories to tell – about survival as an artist, about inspirations. We want to collect and archive it in a rich edition, which is also very visually rich. That is why the edition is considered interdisciplinary, because it is also like an object of visual art.”

Liberts points out that in 2025, five out of six issues of his magazine managed to attract funds from the Latvian State Fund for the Promotion of Literature. In total, more than 40 issues of the magazine “Avīzes Nosakums” have been published, and most of them were published based on self-financing.

The literary magazine “Strāva” recently celebrated its fourth anniversary, its editor Ivars Šteinbergs is pleased to say. He points out that the first issues of the magazine “Strāva” were also published using self-financing funds.

“We have gradually found ourselves [as a publication], and now we have funding from the Latvian Literature Foundation. (..) The literary journal “Strāva” can boast of a very strong literary theory content in Latvian literary periodicals, but we also focus on the latest poetry both in Latvia and abroad,” says Šteinbergs.

Ivars Šteinbergs explains the idea and goals of the festival: “From the perspective of market conditions, of course, all publishers of cultural periodicals are competitors in a sense, because they are fighting for the same reader. There are as many human resources as there are people, and, of course, from a capitalist point of view, that’s how it works. But, in my opinion, it is more meaningful, more friendly, and ultimately more profitable to cooperate, rather than to step on each other’s heads.”

More details of the festival can be found here.

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