A Dispatch on the City of Literature Meeting in Tartu, Estonia
The 2026 Annual Cities of Literature Conference was hosted by Tartu, Estonia between 11-15 May. Our annual conference is intended to strengthen understanding and connections between Cities to build greater future collaboration and to explore the literary life of the host city.
This was the largest conference to date: 57 delegates from 40 cities were in attendance. This was also our first opportunity to meet representatives from Cities who joined the network in October 2025, including folks from Aberystwyth (Cymru), Celje (Slovenia), Conakry (Guinea), Gdańsk (Poland), Kahramanmaraş (Türkiye), Lund (Sweden) and San Luis Potosí (Mexico).
In a packed itinerary over the course of five days, delegates met and discussed issues in our home cities, including the rise of AI, book banning, and the important role that literature plays in building connection and underpinning democracy.
We also got to visit many important venues such as the Tartu Literature House, the Estonian Literary Museum, Tartu Public Library and Aparaadithas culture factory and meet programmers, writers, booksellers, archivists, and librarians.
The Conference took place alongside the Prima Vista Literary Festival, which hosted more than 60 programs centered on the timely theme “True and Fake.” Highlights included a powerful poetry reading and conversation with Ukrainian poet Yuliya Musakovska and a trilingual event (in Estonian, Welsh, and English) featuring Estonian poet Doris Kareva and Welsh poet Mererid Hopwood.
Also launched during the conference were Bus Poetry, displaying poems from 32 Cities of Literature in Tartu public buses (including Seattle’s Dujie Tahat) and Toponymy, an outdoor exhibition produced by Québec City in 2023, now shown in Tartu, that tells the stories behind city names across the network.
Professor Rimas Uzgiris in Vilnius, Lithuania.
After the end of the official conference, a few delegates travelled to Vilnius, Lithuania, another City of Literature to check out their literary scene.
We visited their Literature House and a new space the city is preparing for residencies and co-working. A special treat was a literary walking tour led by Rimas Uzgiris that highlighted Vilnius authors and their links to locations in the city.
Throughout our visit to Tartu and Vilnius, we kept an eye out for Seattle authors on bookstore and library shelves and found some familiar names.
We returned from the conference buzzing with ideas and filled with gratitude for our colleagues around the world. This annual conference builds connections that transcend our geographical boundaries, and strengthens each city as we share our experiences and learn from one another.
