LITBEL Researchers Meet with Brill Representative to Discuss Progress on the Handbook of Latvian Literature

During the international scholarly conference “What Makes Literature? Redefining Realism, Poetics, and Belonging”, held in Riga from 16 to 18 September 2026, researchers involved in the State Research Programme project LITBEL met with Masja Horn, Senior Acquisitions Editor for Literature and Cultural Studies at the international academic publisher Brill, to discuss progress on the forthcoming Handbook of Latvian Literature and the next stages of manuscript preparation.

The meeting brought together Eva Eglāja-Kristsone, editor-in-chief of the Handbook and Principal Investigator of LITBEL, and members of the editorial team Benedikts Kalnačs, Māra Grudule, Artis Ostups, and Jānis Oga.

Discussions focused on the progress of individual chapters, their coherence within the overall structure of the volume, and the editorial requirements for preparing the complete manuscript. Particular attention was paid to maintaining consistent terminology and referencing conventions, ensuring bibliographic accuracy, standardising the English rendering of personal names and literary titles, and preparing appendices, illustrations, and other supplementary materials. The participants also discussed the forthcoming stages of manuscript editing, peer review, and submission to the publisher.

The Handbook of Latvian Literature will be published in Brill’s Handbooks of Literary and Cultural Studies series, which provides comprehensive scholarly overviews of the history, theories, and current debates in literary and cultural studies. The volume will introduce international audiences to the history of Latvian literature, its major authors, literary movements, genres, and current research perspectives, positioning Latvian literature within broader European and global literary contexts.

The preparation of the Handbook is one of the major scholarly objectives of the project “Latvian Literature as Belonging: Personalities, Poetics, and the Public Sphere” (LITBEL). Bringing together scholars from Latvia and abroad, the publication seeks to establish a shared framework for presenting Latvian literary history to an international academic readership.

The meeting with Brill marked an important step in coordinating the editorial process and strengthening cooperation as the manuscript moves towards its next stages of preparation.

The Handbook is being prepared within the State Research Programme project “Latvian Literature as Belonging: Personalities, Poetics, and the Public Sphere” (LITBEL, No. VPP-IZM-Letonika-2025/1-0006), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia.