For a long time I resisted calling myself a biographer. I didn’t mean to write these kinds of stories, or those kinds of books. But, like all the best things in life (cats, love) — biography chose me. Despite myself, and despite having been trained as a literary scholar at a time when the author was dead, when a writer’s intention didn’t matter, and when the makings of a literary life were beside the point, writing lives was what I wanted to do.

I started by telling the story of an Algerian author gunned down in 1993 in a civil war between armed militants and a dictatorship. He was thirty-eight when he was killed, and had accomplished more than most of us do in a lifetime. His name was Tahar Djaout, and the book I wrote about him is called Silence is Death (his most famous turn of phrase).

Next, I wrote the story of a brave librarian who defied Nazism. She left us thousands of letters and scores of diaries in various languages. I used these to write Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė. The book will be published in 2012 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Now, I’m working on a third project. It’s a personal story that starts in Lithuania, continues in Siberia, and ends in Canada. I’ll let you know more as that develops.

Julija Sukys. Silence is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

Julija Sukys. Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite (Forthcoming, University of Nebraska Press, 2012).

I mentor authors and lead writing workshops through the Quebec Writers' Federation.