There are souls whose essence reflects the poetic charm of the ocean, and Anna Iltnere is one of them. Our maritime paths inevitably crossed after running parallel for some time without either of us realizing it.
For a long time, I thought the Sea Library was just a bookstore with a wonderfully fitting name until my first written contact with Anna, its founder, made me aware that it was an authentic library of the sea. It seemed even more beautiful to me then. I wanted to learn all about this beautiful project and contribute to spreading its message.
The result is this delightful interview with Anna Iltnere, where she shares everything about her sea journey and her sea project. I’ll tell you, it resonates deeply with my own path and surely with yours if you’re reading this…
Here begins your journey into the adventures of the Sea Library, let’s go!
Who is Anna Iltnere and how does she get to the sea or does the sea get to her?
Anna is a sea librarian. Born in a family of artists, architects and actors, worked for many years in the field of design and contemporary art journalism, then washed ashore by the Baltic Sea. The sea changed my life. There are many inner seas, I’ve noticed. Surfer’s sea, sailor’s sea, swimmer’s sea, beachcomber’s sea, holiday sea… I’m more of a curious land animal, living on the edge of the land and water. Swimming, whenever I can, but mostly watergazing. I could binge watch the water forever. How it moves, how the skin of the sea changes because of the sun, moon and sky, because of my eyes – what I notice, what I don’t. And reading. I read books about the sea. It’s my gift to writers, to take my time and read every sentence they have written about the sea. It’s my gift to books, because they become alive when we read. And it’s my gift to myself because reading heals me, calms me, anchors me, makes me happy as a kid on a summer holiday. With all this love overflowing, I share these books with others. It’s my gift to you.
Tell us about the origin of your inspiring initiative to establish a sea library. What motivated you to undertake this unique and generous project?
My motivation and muse was and is the sea. I’ve born and raised on city pavements but aged 30 left everything behind and moved with my husband and our first son, still a toddler, to an old wooden house in a seaside town. It was built as a summer house and we moved there in late October, when the weather is cold and stormy. It was a decision made on a full moon night and fulfilled a week later. There we were with our bags and cats in a house not built for winter living. But we managed, adapted and have lived here ever since for 10 years now. It took a while but the sea put a spell on me eventually. And when I was pregnant with our second boy, I cut all final ties with my previous life, left my job as an editor of an online art media, and found myself wandering by the sea every day and searching for myself among driftwood and trash. With nothing to do except taking care of my beautiful boys, I noticed that I keep gravitating towards books. I read about the sea to find words for what I felt. One day I had an epiphany to build a sea book place by the sea. It was a fancy dream at first, a glass cube at the beach, a sea book store for summer tourists, but soon the dream faded because it felt weird. I imagined myself as a sundried fish sitting by the counter and counting money. But the core of the idea didn’t leave my heart. Life took turns, and I kept holding on to books and gathering them inside an empty room of our house. Until one day I opened the doors to the public because of a deep need to share these great stories. I let strangers inside our home.
How is The Sea Library funded and operated? What has been your strategy to keep this project going and make it accessible to everyone?
The Sea Library has evolved into something rich and strange, something I hadn’t even dared to imagine. My initial idea was very simple – to share my cool books with someone else, not just my family. Books have to be read. But when in 2018 I announced online that this place is Open, wonders started to happen as if I would have climbed through a wardrobe into the other side. Since then the books have been flowing in from readers, writers, publishing houses. A retired local captain brought a whole bag full of his own sea books and trusted them to me. I visited the lobby of a five-star hotel in Riga because a book about dolphins had been left there for me by a supporter who couldn’t make it to Jūrmala. There have been visitors from the UK in one phase of a Covid pandemics, when the traveling was allowed, but with all the risks involved, the couple didn’t want to come inside, they just wanted to say hello and peek inside the Sea Library through the window. Later, I walked them back to the bus stop, we hugged and I returned home with a book in my hand and a tiny jar of sand from their coast inside my pocket. A distant friend once caught me on my way to the train station just to give a few pebbles from the coast of Iceland. I pin postcards to the wall, put shells on shelves and gather books together. This place is growing like a reef.
There are many stories like these. And the stories about readers who borrow the books. The Sea Library has been created by a community of sea loving souls. Not rushing here in crowds, not standing outside in lines, but appearing here and there, now and then, as if washing ashore with a story of their own.
From the financial point of view it’s impossible that the Sea Library is still floating. There has been no strategy, whatsoever. When I left my job, I had some savings, maternity fee for a couple of years, and support from my husband and parents. Of course after years of living like this and with the war in the Ukraine which has been followed by an energy crisis and high prices, I felt that our household needed some additional income and my boys were big enough for me to return to work. So two years ago I started to browse job offers, but couldn’t imagine returning to my previous life, working amok, yet I had to figure it out. I am so grateful there was a vacancy at the National Library of Latvia and I was accepted. I’ve never worked in libraries and never studied that. But they trusted me and it has been wonderful. Now the job at the National library is funding new books for the Sea Library. I like that a lot. It feels right.
The Sea Library has changed a little during these first five years – there were 100 books, now there are around 800. But apart from that it hasn’t changed at all. There’s something about it being just a room, not an institution, that I really love. It’s hard to explain but as soon as I start to think about stuff like evolving into something bigger, which is tempting at times, changing premises etcetera, it feels wrong, and the glow of the Sea Library fades.
While working in the field of Latvian libraries network for nearly two years now, I’ve learned a lot, and, of course, started having some ideas on how to change my library into a more real library. But if I do, it immediately takes all the magic away. I have to be careful, it’s like playing with fire when all I have to do is just play with water. I’m a kid here, having fun in this room full of books, a room that inspires people all over the world. I want it to stay like that. My only strategy is to be curious.
I grew up in a studio where two artists, my mum and dad, worked. I’ve seen the struggle and delight in creating an artwork as honestly as possible. So I keep having this suspicious idea that maybe the Sea Library is more of a living artwork than a standard library. And that’s why there is this constant push and pull inside me, these tides of honesty guiding my way forward. Maybe. But I’ve never dared to call myself an artist.
Having the Sea Library has involved a lot of no-no’s, too. I once had to turn down a generous offer to be sent thousands and thousands of books about the sea, a very unique collection, if I were to open a library in a more public space. It’s a nice idea, of course, but I imagined myself sitting there all day, away from my home, my boys, waiting for visitors who might not come and playing a real librarian, and I knew immediately that the answer was no, call me a fool.
I’ve read that this slice of earth, where our old house is standing, was once under an ancient Littorian sea. There is white sand under a thin layer of soil in our garden and if you dig even deeper, you can find ancient ambers. Not by the sea, but here, right under the Sea Library. I think this place has put a spell on me and I cannot leave this enchanted island of books.
I joke that the sea librarian was invented by the sea and I’m paid in sand dollars from a mermaids’ purse.
What languages are the books available in the library?
Mostly in English and Latvian, but there are also copies in German, French, Slovenian, Lithuanian, Spanish (thank you!).
What has the media and press reception been like for The Sea Library?
Miraculous, to say the least. Both on a local and international level. When the story about the Sea Library was aired on BBC Radio 4, I was thinking, wow, a room of my own is on the radio. The very first publication was on Caught by the River. Writer Iain Rowan told them about the Sea Library, and it was a big surprise for me. Every year someone knocks on my door with a wish to tell the story to their readers. From design magazines to newspapers and podcasts. Last summer a well-read Latvian news magazine published a piece about the Sea Library titled “Creating your own world”. Everything about the Sea Library has been miraculous. But the main reason why I love publicity is only one: for a person who loves the sea but doesn’t know the Sea Library to discover this remote place and find a great book. So I want to thank you as well for interviewing me for your readers and visitors.
Let’s talk about the children’s section at the library. What led you to include this aspect in the project and how has its reception been?
One day I dusted the bookshelves and started to think that it’s not fair that there are more books about the sea for grownups than for the kids. As I didn’t have any extra money to suddenly buy a lot more books, I bought yarns instead and started to weave bookmarks inspired by the colors from book covers and hues of the sea. I sold the bookmarks online and with the money earned bought books for kids. This was another fun journey. The reception was fantastic, some bookmarks ended up in a shop in the Azores, some in a bookshop in the UK, many were ordered from all over the world: Australia, USA, New Zealand, Sweden, Qatar etc. In that way I managed to buy so many books for young readers – nearly 200 – that my husband had to build a new bookshelf in the corner of the Sea Library where those books now live together with plush whales, dolphins, seahorses and moomins. And these books are borrowed and read by grownups as well.
On a personal level, what has this project brought you? What was your life like before the Sea Library and how has it changed since then?
Well, this is a big one. In William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, a sea change is a change brought about by the sea. The spirit Ariel sings about it and ever since I started to live here, I have been shapeshifted entirely. The sea put ideas into my head and I opened the Sea Library which was like finally being able to sing in my own voice. No more rushing towards something, everything suddenly was right here. I remember clearly the moment when I decided to quit my previous job which was more like intentionally stepping out of a whole field of contacts and possibilities. Latvia is a small country. If you leave a professional field, you have to change your profession to find other opportunities. I knew I was burning the bridges with no idea what to do but savings bought me some time. It was crazy. But I trusted. And the Sea Library, this naive idea to just spend my time reading books and giving them to someone who loves to read about the sea, has unrolled a fantastic map in front of me, full of surprises, full of possibilities, full of such amazing human beings out there. I couldn’t have imagined how big the world is and – how close.
Although the library is located in Latvia, how does the online version work? What steps should a user interested in accessing the resources follow?
The sea-library.com is created as a catalog of books, there aren’t all the books yet as I’m taking it slowly, but here in the list you can check all of them. Also, the Instagram account is a good place to notice the books. And my beachbooks.blog is a place for interviews, reviews and my own letters of how the Sea Library is doing. For many these resources are more for information to choose what to buy, not borrow. But there is also a kinship of readers who keep borrowing books even if living far away from here. There are not that many of them, so I can afford a model, where you choose a book to borrow, I send it to you and pay for the post. When you have read it, you send it back to me and pay for the return post. It does sound completely crazy, right? But it has worked perfectly well, no book has been stolen or lost. To trust was an important step when I opened the Sea Library. In the meantime, there are some very special signed copies that I try not to lose, for example from the late Barry Lopez, who wrote to me in 2019, “Thank you for your work at the Sea Library. It’s heart lifting to consider what you’re doing while others spiral into despair.” But many authors have sent duplicates, where one signed copy stays on my shelf, and the other is dedicated to the readers of the Sea Library. And with all the generosity and love flowing into the Sea Library from complete strangers, my gift is to trust and give back. Books have to be read. Also, a bit of pocket money from PayPal goes into new books and postal expenses.
I’ve also created a survey where you can tell more about yourself and books that might interest you, and that helps me when choosing books to buy with a particular reader in mind.
Do you have future plans to expand or develop the project further, or do you prefer to let the path surprise you and adapt as you go?
What I promised myself years ago, is not to bother with ambition and huge plans. It’s a personal story. I had been traveling Europe and meeting contemporary art stars that I admired, visiting beautiful openings and events but most of the time I was sitting in hotels sad, lost and claustrophobic. I couldn’t see any purpose of this constant moving forward. So I decided to quit, to stay put, to anchor, to listen and observe. This summer it will be ten years since I left, ten years since I last boarded a plane.
Also, it feels good to live like this. As if my brain would have changed its culture, where traveling means going to the nearby meadow every day, noticing something new each time. Where reaching new lands means reading books and writing letters that will be sent overseas. For many it would be a slow death, I suppose, but for me it was a strange rebirth. There are thousands of ways to live. I can cross oceans and sunbathe on tropical beaches, but what if I go for a swim on a misty morning here in the gray Baltic Sea knowing that all water is connected and it’s the same sea where a close friend of mine swims every night far away from me. As a daughter of an artist, I’ve always believed that life is art. Let’s not be boring in the ways we imagine how to see the world around us and how to think about things and how to live our days. Besides, good books are the best antidote to thinking like everyone else.
Stopping and anchoring here in the Sea Library has opened the world around me in surprising ways. I’ve found friends all over the world and opened the doors to visitors from distant places, and I’ve built a beautiful utopia, a library on the brink of imagination. I do have some immediate plans, like finishing that essay or reading this book or polishing a draft. But with no calculations, just the compass in my hands in the shape of a heart. I don’t believe in gold stars, I do believe in the sea and art. I believe in the long term – in watching the Sea Library being Sea Library. No running anymore, just this anchored dot in place and time, a timeless point where I can just sit and read and talk to someone interested in the sea or – be quiet.
We know that you are writing a book about this beautiful project. When can we expect its publication and in what formats and languages will it be available?
Since the beginning of this year a lovely little fictional book, that we have written in English together with American writer Lewis Buzbee from San Francisco, is out there looking for a publisher. It’s a story featuring the real Sea Library, me and my family, but the plotline is imagined and it’s about a retired Captain, who doesn’t know how to live on land and about Anna, the sea librarian, who doesn’t know how to swim in the sea (I learned to swim aged 34 after reading a book about the sea). It’s a lovely and fable-like story about the transformative power of books and the sea and the beauty of friendship.
Parallel to that for years now I’ve been working on my memoir, also in English, about how a girl from a post-soviet bohemian artist family found her own voice by the sea. I hope it will be finished soon and will start its long journey into becoming a book. Because I believe this story of the Sea Library can inspire so many out there to trust and try. I am happy to have Allison Remcheck Pernetti, my agent from Stimola Literary Studio, by my side. Without the Sea Library, this Narnia room inside our house, I probably wouldn’t have met any of them.
I don’t know where I’d be without it.
Thank you so much, Anna, for sharing your fascinating ocean story with Just the Sea!
Your passion for the sea and your commitment to fostering a community of ocean enthusiasts are truly inspiring.
From Just the Sea, we hope that the adventures of Sea Library continue to inspire and bring together individuals from all corners of the world, weaving a network of sea lovers and appreciation for the vast wonders of the ocean.
Recordamos, cuando está a punto de cumplirse un nuevo aniversario, la expedición de Shackleton En 1914 no había ni GPS, ni internet, ni teléfonos satélites. Tampoco nadie hablaba de liderazgo de equipos, de resiliencia o de comunicación interpersonal. En 1914 había sextantes, brújulas y mapas. Y en ese año Sarajevo es escenario de un asesinato …
_Original text in English If I had to choose a person of the year, it would undoubtedly be Richard P. Feynman. I don’t follow other people’s calendars. Do you? Or do you also make up your own? Why let the world dictate when you should be having your “aha” moments? My timeline is my own, …
Just the Sea trae a España dos publicaciones maravillosas, Sirene Journal y Elementum journal. Auténticas joyas, únicas, especiales, inspiradoras que conectan directamente con el alma. Las puedes comprar en nuestra web o en tiendas físicas seleccionadas como La Fábrica, librería náutica Robinson, La tienda del Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid o La Boutique de la …
Anna Iltnere and The Sea Library: Building Community Through a Passion for the Sea
There are souls whose essence reflects the poetic charm of the ocean, and Anna Iltnere is one of them. Our maritime paths inevitably crossed after running parallel for some time without either of us realizing it.
For a long time, I thought the Sea Library was just a bookstore with a wonderfully fitting name until my first written contact with Anna, its founder, made me aware that it was an authentic library of the sea. It seemed even more beautiful to me then. I wanted to learn all about this beautiful project and contribute to spreading its message.
The result is this delightful interview with Anna Iltnere, where she shares everything about her sea journey and her sea project. I’ll tell you, it resonates deeply with my own path and surely with yours if you’re reading this…
Here begins your journey into the adventures of the Sea Library, let’s go!
Who is Anna Iltnere and how does she get to the sea or does the sea get to her?
Anna is a sea librarian. Born in a family of artists, architects and actors, worked for many years in the field of design and contemporary art journalism, then washed ashore by the Baltic Sea. The sea changed my life. There are many inner seas, I’ve noticed. Surfer’s sea, sailor’s sea, swimmer’s sea, beachcomber’s sea, holiday sea… I’m more of a curious land animal, living on the edge of the land and water. Swimming, whenever I can, but mostly watergazing. I could binge watch the water forever. How it moves, how the skin of the sea changes because of the sun, moon and sky, because of my eyes – what I notice, what I don’t. And reading. I read books about the sea. It’s my gift to writers, to take my time and read every sentence they have written about the sea. It’s my gift to books, because they become alive when we read. And it’s my gift to myself because reading heals me, calms me, anchors me, makes me happy as a kid on a summer holiday. With all this love overflowing, I share these books with others. It’s my gift to you.
Tell us about the origin of your inspiring initiative to establish a sea library. What motivated you to undertake this unique and generous project?
My motivation and muse was and is the sea. I’ve born and raised on city pavements but aged 30 left everything behind and moved with my husband and our first son, still a toddler, to an old wooden house in a seaside town. It was built as a summer house and we moved there in late October, when the weather is cold and stormy. It was a decision made on a full moon night and fulfilled a week later. There we were with our bags and cats in a house not built for winter living. But we managed, adapted and have lived here ever since for 10 years now. It took a while but the sea put a spell on me eventually. And when I was pregnant with our second boy, I cut all final ties with my previous life, left my job as an editor of an online art media, and found myself wandering by the sea every day and searching for myself among driftwood and trash. With nothing to do except taking care of my beautiful boys, I noticed that I keep gravitating towards books. I read about the sea to find words for what I felt. One day I had an epiphany to build a sea book place by the sea. It was a fancy dream at first, a glass cube at the beach, a sea book store for summer tourists, but soon the dream faded because it felt weird. I imagined myself as a sundried fish sitting by the counter and counting money. But the core of the idea didn’t leave my heart. Life took turns, and I kept holding on to books and gathering them inside an empty room of our house. Until one day I opened the doors to the public because of a deep need to share these great stories. I let strangers inside our home.
How is The Sea Library funded and operated? What has been your strategy to keep this project going and make it accessible to everyone?
The Sea Library has evolved into something rich and strange, something I hadn’t even dared to imagine. My initial idea was very simple – to share my cool books with someone else, not just my family. Books have to be read. But when in 2018 I announced online that this place is Open, wonders started to happen as if I would have climbed through a wardrobe into the other side. Since then the books have been flowing in from readers, writers, publishing houses. A retired local captain brought a whole bag full of his own sea books and trusted them to me. I visited the lobby of a five-star hotel in Riga because a book about dolphins had been left there for me by a supporter who couldn’t make it to Jūrmala. There have been visitors from the UK in one phase of a Covid pandemics, when the traveling was allowed, but with all the risks involved, the couple didn’t want to come inside, they just wanted to say hello and peek inside the Sea Library through the window. Later, I walked them back to the bus stop, we hugged and I returned home with a book in my hand and a tiny jar of sand from their coast inside my pocket. A distant friend once caught me on my way to the train station just to give a few pebbles from the coast of Iceland. I pin postcards to the wall, put shells on shelves and gather books together. This place is growing like a reef.
There are many stories like these. And the stories about readers who borrow the books. The Sea Library has been created by a community of sea loving souls. Not rushing here in crowds, not standing outside in lines, but appearing here and there, now and then, as if washing ashore with a story of their own.
From the financial point of view it’s impossible that the Sea Library is still floating. There has been no strategy, whatsoever. When I left my job, I had some savings, maternity fee for a couple of years, and support from my husband and parents. Of course after years of living like this and with the war in the Ukraine which has been followed by an energy crisis and high prices, I felt that our household needed some additional income and my boys were big enough for me to return to work. So two years ago I started to browse job offers, but couldn’t imagine returning to my previous life, working amok, yet I had to figure it out. I am so grateful there was a vacancy at the National Library of Latvia and I was accepted. I’ve never worked in libraries and never studied that. But they trusted me and it has been wonderful. Now the job at the National library is funding new books for the Sea Library. I like that a lot. It feels right.
The Sea Library has changed a little during these first five years – there were 100 books, now there are around 800. But apart from that it hasn’t changed at all. There’s something about it being just a room, not an institution, that I really love. It’s hard to explain but as soon as I start to think about stuff like evolving into something bigger, which is tempting at times, changing premises etcetera, it feels wrong, and the glow of the Sea Library fades.
While working in the field of Latvian libraries network for nearly two years now, I’ve learned a lot, and, of course, started having some ideas on how to change my library into a more real library. But if I do, it immediately takes all the magic away. I have to be careful, it’s like playing with fire when all I have to do is just play with water. I’m a kid here, having fun in this room full of books, a room that inspires people all over the world. I want it to stay like that. My only strategy is to be curious.
I grew up in a studio where two artists, my mum and dad, worked. I’ve seen the struggle and delight in creating an artwork as honestly as possible. So I keep having this suspicious idea that maybe the Sea Library is more of a living artwork than a standard library. And that’s why there is this constant push and pull inside me, these tides of honesty guiding my way forward. Maybe. But I’ve never dared to call myself an artist.
Having the Sea Library has involved a lot of no-no’s, too. I once had to turn down a generous offer to be sent thousands and thousands of books about the sea, a very unique collection, if I were to open a library in a more public space. It’s a nice idea, of course, but I imagined myself sitting there all day, away from my home, my boys, waiting for visitors who might not come and playing a real librarian, and I knew immediately that the answer was no, call me a fool.
I’ve read that this slice of earth, where our old house is standing, was once under an ancient Littorian sea. There is white sand under a thin layer of soil in our garden and if you dig even deeper, you can find ancient ambers. Not by the sea, but here, right under the Sea Library. I think this place has put a spell on me and I cannot leave this enchanted island of books.
I joke that the sea librarian was invented by the sea and I’m paid in sand dollars from a mermaids’ purse.
What languages are the books available in the library?
Mostly in English and Latvian, but there are also copies in German, French, Slovenian, Lithuanian, Spanish (thank you!).
What has the media and press reception been like for The Sea Library?
Miraculous, to say the least. Both on a local and international level. When the story about the Sea Library was aired on BBC Radio 4, I was thinking, wow, a room of my own is on the radio. The very first publication was on Caught by the River. Writer Iain Rowan told them about the Sea Library, and it was a big surprise for me. Every year someone knocks on my door with a wish to tell the story to their readers. From design magazines to newspapers and podcasts. Last summer a well-read Latvian news magazine published a piece about the Sea Library titled “Creating your own world”. Everything about the Sea Library has been miraculous. But the main reason why I love publicity is only one: for a person who loves the sea but doesn’t know the Sea Library to discover this remote place and find a great book. So I want to thank you as well for interviewing me for your readers and visitors.
Let’s talk about the children’s section at the library. What led you to include this aspect in the project and how has its reception been?
One day I dusted the bookshelves and started to think that it’s not fair that there are more books about the sea for grownups than for the kids. As I didn’t have any extra money to suddenly buy a lot more books, I bought yarns instead and started to weave bookmarks inspired by the colors from book covers and hues of the sea. I sold the bookmarks online and with the money earned bought books for kids. This was another fun journey. The reception was fantastic, some bookmarks ended up in a shop in the Azores, some in a bookshop in the UK, many were ordered from all over the world: Australia, USA, New Zealand, Sweden, Qatar etc. In that way I managed to buy so many books for young readers – nearly 200 – that my husband had to build a new bookshelf in the corner of the Sea Library where those books now live together with plush whales, dolphins, seahorses and moomins. And these books are borrowed and read by grownups as well.
On a personal level, what has this project brought you? What was your life like before the Sea Library and how has it changed since then?
Well, this is a big one. In William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, a sea change is a change brought about by the sea. The spirit Ariel sings about it and ever since I started to live here, I have been shapeshifted entirely. The sea put ideas into my head and I opened the Sea Library which was like finally being able to sing in my own voice. No more rushing towards something, everything suddenly was right here. I remember clearly the moment when I decided to quit my previous job which was more like intentionally stepping out of a whole field of contacts and possibilities. Latvia is a small country. If you leave a professional field, you have to change your profession to find other opportunities. I knew I was burning the bridges with no idea what to do but savings bought me some time. It was crazy. But I trusted. And the Sea Library, this naive idea to just spend my time reading books and giving them to someone who loves to read about the sea, has unrolled a fantastic map in front of me, full of surprises, full of possibilities, full of such amazing human beings out there. I couldn’t have imagined how big the world is and – how close.
Although the library is located in Latvia, how does the online version work? What steps should a user interested in accessing the resources follow?
The sea-library.com is created as a catalog of books, there aren’t all the books yet as I’m taking it slowly, but here in the list you can check all of them. Also, the Instagram account is a good place to notice the books. And my beachbooks.blog is a place for interviews, reviews and my own letters of how the Sea Library is doing. For many these resources are more for information to choose what to buy, not borrow. But there is also a kinship of readers who keep borrowing books even if living far away from here. There are not that many of them, so I can afford a model, where you choose a book to borrow, I send it to you and pay for the post. When you have read it, you send it back to me and pay for the return post. It does sound completely crazy, right? But it has worked perfectly well, no book has been stolen or lost. To trust was an important step when I opened the Sea Library. In the meantime, there are some very special signed copies that I try not to lose, for example from the late Barry Lopez, who wrote to me in 2019, “Thank you for your work at the Sea Library. It’s heart lifting to consider what you’re doing while others spiral into despair.” But many authors have sent duplicates, where one signed copy stays on my shelf, and the other is dedicated to the readers of the Sea Library. And with all the generosity and love flowing into the Sea Library from complete strangers, my gift is to trust and give back. Books have to be read. Also, a bit of pocket money from PayPal goes into new books and postal expenses.
I’ve also created a survey where you can tell more about yourself and books that might interest you, and that helps me when choosing books to buy with a particular reader in mind.
Do you have future plans to expand or develop the project further, or do you prefer to let the path surprise you and adapt as you go?
What I promised myself years ago, is not to bother with ambition and huge plans. It’s a personal story. I had been traveling Europe and meeting contemporary art stars that I admired, visiting beautiful openings and events but most of the time I was sitting in hotels sad, lost and claustrophobic. I couldn’t see any purpose of this constant moving forward. So I decided to quit, to stay put, to anchor, to listen and observe. This summer it will be ten years since I left, ten years since I last boarded a plane.
Also, it feels good to live like this. As if my brain would have changed its culture, where traveling means going to the nearby meadow every day, noticing something new each time. Where reaching new lands means reading books and writing letters that will be sent overseas. For many it would be a slow death, I suppose, but for me it was a strange rebirth. There are thousands of ways to live. I can cross oceans and sunbathe on tropical beaches, but what if I go for a swim on a misty morning here in the gray Baltic Sea knowing that all water is connected and it’s the same sea where a close friend of mine swims every night far away from me. As a daughter of an artist, I’ve always believed that life is art. Let’s not be boring in the ways we imagine how to see the world around us and how to think about things and how to live our days. Besides, good books are the best antidote to thinking like everyone else.
Stopping and anchoring here in the Sea Library has opened the world around me in surprising ways. I’ve found friends all over the world and opened the doors to visitors from distant places, and I’ve built a beautiful utopia, a library on the brink of imagination. I do have some immediate plans, like finishing that essay or reading this book or polishing a draft. But with no calculations, just the compass in my hands in the shape of a heart. I don’t believe in gold stars, I do believe in the sea and art. I believe in the long term – in watching the Sea Library being Sea Library. No running anymore, just this anchored dot in place and time, a timeless point where I can just sit and read and talk to someone interested in the sea or – be quiet.
Your Underwater Anchor earring has become a very dear talisman to me with a symbolic meaning.
We know that you are writing a book about this beautiful project. When can we expect its publication and in what formats and languages will it be available?
Since the beginning of this year a lovely little fictional book, that we have written in English together with American writer Lewis Buzbee from San Francisco, is out there looking for a publisher. It’s a story featuring the real Sea Library, me and my family, but the plotline is imagined and it’s about a retired Captain, who doesn’t know how to live on land and about Anna, the sea librarian, who doesn’t know how to swim in the sea (I learned to swim aged 34 after reading a book about the sea). It’s a lovely and fable-like story about the transformative power of books and the sea and the beauty of friendship.
Parallel to that for years now I’ve been working on my memoir, also in English, about how a girl from a post-soviet bohemian artist family found her own voice by the sea. I hope it will be finished soon and will start its long journey into becoming a book. Because I believe this story of the Sea Library can inspire so many out there to trust and try. I am happy to have Allison Remcheck Pernetti, my agent from Stimola Literary Studio, by my side. Without the Sea Library, this Narnia room inside our house, I probably wouldn’t have met any of them.
I don’t know where I’d be without it.
Thank you so much, Anna, for sharing your fascinating ocean story with Just the Sea!
Your passion for the sea and your commitment to fostering a community of ocean enthusiasts are truly inspiring.
From Just the Sea, we hope that the adventures of Sea Library continue to inspire and bring together individuals from all corners of the world, weaving a network of sea lovers and appreciation for the vast wonders of the ocean.
Long live to the Sea Library!
Photo cover “Anna Iltnere with dalmatian dog” by Lauma Kalnina for DEKO magazine
Other photos by Anna Iltnere
Interview by Angela Lago, founder of Angela Lago sea jewelry & Just the Sea
Related Posts
La Antártida, hace 105 años
Recordamos, cuando está a punto de cumplirse un nuevo aniversario, la expedición de Shackleton En 1914 no había ni GPS, ni internet, ni teléfonos satélites. Tampoco nadie hablaba de liderazgo de equipos, de resiliencia o de comunicación interpersonal. En 1914 había sextantes, brújulas y mapas. Y en ese año Sarajevo es escenario de un asesinato …
Ode to the Sea by Pablo Neruda: Poetry at Just the Sea
Explore Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Sea” and immerse yourself in his poetic tribute to the majesty and timeless allure of the sea
Person of the Year 2024: Timeless Encounters That Transform Your Life
_Original text in English If I had to choose a person of the year, it would undoubtedly be Richard P. Feynman. I don’t follow other people’s calendars. Do you? Or do you also make up your own? Why let the world dictate when you should be having your “aha” moments? My timeline is my own, …
Revistas que vienen del mar. Just the Sea trae a España Sirene y Elementum, el mar en tus manos
Just the Sea trae a España dos publicaciones maravillosas, Sirene Journal y Elementum journal. Auténticas joyas, únicas, especiales, inspiradoras que conectan directamente con el alma. Las puedes comprar en nuestra web o en tiendas físicas seleccionadas como La Fábrica, librería náutica Robinson, La tienda del Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid o La Boutique de la …