The book "Writing COVID-19 Lives" published by "Routledge"
The book "Writing COVID-19 Lives", published by "Routledge", explores life writing during the pandemic, which helped many people both make sense of and document what was happening in a time of crisis. Poetry, memoirs, autofiction, photographs, diaries, and digital stories reveal the aesthetics of the pandemic, marked by feelings of insecurity, uncertainty, and loss. The volume includes research from Canada, the United States, China, Latvia, Peru, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
The newly published book also features a chapter by researchers from Latvia: Associate Professor Sanita Reinsone of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Latvia, together with researchers Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska, Haralds Matulis, and Elvīra Žvarte from the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art. Their joint chapter is titled "Crowdsourced COVID-19, Life Writing, and Collective Memory in Latvia".
The chapter analyzes the "Pandemic Diaries" project of the Archives of Latvian Folklore—a crowdsourced initiative that collected 2,333 diary entries, 806 images, and 3,766 geotags from 238 participants, revealing both individual and collective observations and experiences during the pandemic.
The book’s cover design features an image from the pandemic diary of the artist Anna Meiere Logina.