From September 16 to 18, a major international conference titled "What Shapes Literature: Rethinking Realism, Poetics, and Belonging" took place in Riga. Researchers in literature, culture, art, media, memory, and identity processes from around the world addressed literature both as an aesthetic and a social/cultural phenomenon that also interacts with history and politics.

As part of the conference, an interview was conducted with the keynote speaker, Professor Emeritus Dirk Göttsche of the University of Nottingham, one of today's leading scholars of realism.