User:Peteris Cedrins

Pēteris Cedriņš was born in Chicago in 1964 and repatriated to Latvia in 1991. He received his MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. As Assistant Press Secretary at the Chancery of the President of Latvia until October 2008, he worked as a speech-writer and translator to Latvia's former president, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. He now works as a freelance writer, editor and translator, and was media consultant to Reform Task Force Latvia. Most recently, he co-translated the alternative guidebook Another Travel Guide Rīga, and authored a condensed "History of Latvia" for the Latvian Institute. He writes a column for Baltic Outlook.

He taught American literature and translation at the University of Latvia and Daugavpils Pedagogical University. In February 2010, he lectured on United States foreign policy at the Baltic International Academy. His translations include The Encomium to Riga, a 16th century work by Basilius Plinius (Rīga: Latvijas Kultūras Fonds, 1997), and contemporary poetry by Uldis Bērziņš and Jānis Elsbergs. He is one of the translators of the new History of Latvia in the 20th century, published in English by Jumava. His poems, reviews and other writings have appeared in Sulfur, Open Space, Hodos, and Notus in the United States, Shearsman in England, Rīgas Laiks, Diena, Literatūra, Māksla, Mēs, and Karogs in Latvia, Jaunā Gaita in Canada, and in Lithuanian, Slovenian, and French translation. Part of his extended prose work, The Penetralium, was published by the Oasis Press, and a further extract appeared in 10th Muse. He has also written on politics, culture and business in Latgale for The Baltic Times.

Some of his prose and poetry can be found on the Web at his site, as well as at Archipelago and Shearsman. He blogs on politics and history at Marginalia.

He has received a Landsman Fellowship, the Bieriņš Award, and grants from the Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia and the European Union. He served as the International Secretary of the Writers' Union of Latvia and on the Board of Directors at the Center for Multinational Culture in Daugavpils, and represented Latvia at the Baltic Writers' Council and Montmartre en Europe. He has translated for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Secretariat of the Special Assignments Minister for Social Integration of the Republic of Latvia, Jerome Rothenberg, Per Olov Enquist, Rītdienai, the Latvian Academy of Arts, and Adell Saatchi & Saatchi.

He lived with the painter Ingūna Liepa (see The Art of Ingūna Liepa) in the somewhat Lovecraftian Jaunbūve district of Daugavpils for many years. In January 2011 he relocated to Riga. Since August 2011 he has been living in Kaltene on the Gulf of Riga. Here at Wikipedia, he primarily writes and edits articles on Latvian history and culture -- see Young Latvians, the Latvian National Awakening, Abrene District, the Latvian Social Democratic Union, Rainis, Selonia, Andrejs Pumpurs, Lielvārde, etc.