In September 2009, the literature festival featuring trips by authors to Europe's easternmost borders lead to Belarus and Lithuania – two of Eastern Europe's neighbouring countries connected by a long mutual history and at the same time separated from one another by the external frontier of the Community. Several authors from Poland, the Ukraine, and Germany travelled to Minsk and Vilnius to meet there with authors from Belarus and Lithuania.

Held in Minsk, there was a large-scale collective reading in which authors introduced themselves in their mother tongue and in translation, but also an English-language podium discussion at the city's Goethe-Institut. Additional readings were staged in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut and the Halma Haus.

The festival night in Vilnius took place in conjunction with the official program for the city's 2009 European Capital of Culture celebrations. Here too, alongside a large-scale collective reading with presentation of the authors, many additional readings were staged at a variety of public locations. Further more on the 25th of September the "German Week" started in Minsk, which was initiated by the authors talking about borderlands and their existence as writers.

A trilingual festival newspaper offered detailed information on the participating authors and the scheduled events in conjunction with the European Borderlands Festival Minsk-Vilnius 2009.

Project duration: 23th to the 27th of September 2009

Project venue: Minsk (Belarus) and Vilnius (Lithuania)

Project partners: Allianz Cultural Foundation, Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Goethe-Institut