Ugnė Karvelis

Ugnė Karvelis (June 13, 1935 in Noreikiškės, Lithuania – March 4, 2002 in Paris, France) was a writer, a translator and a member of the UNESCO Executive Board from 1997 to 2002.

Biography

Ugnė Karvelis was born in Noreikiškės, Kaunas district on June 13, 1935 to Lithuanian politician Petras Karvelis (1925-1929 Foreign Minister of Lithuania) and Veronika Bakštytė, a cultural activist. Following the 1940 Soviet occupation of Lithuania, the Karvelis family emigrated to Germany in 1944.

In 1940 Karvelis enrolled in Sacre Coeur, a private school in Berlin. She continued her studies at Kaunas Aušra Gymnasium (1943-1944) and Tübingen French school (1945-1950). Karvelis studied at the Sorbonne (1951-1952) and then in the international relations department at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris from 1952-1956. Karvelis furthered her studies overseas at Columbia University in New York in the history and economics departments from 1957-1958.

In 1955 Karvelis began working for Express magazine in the international relations department. From 1959 to 1983 she worked as a publisher and editor for Editions Gallimard, beginning as an International department manageress, and later managing the Latin America, Spain, Portugal and Eastern Europe departments. Thanks to her, many renowned writers such as Julio Cortázar (her couple between 1967 and 1970), Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz were published in France. Karvelis also worked as a literary critic publishing in Le Figaro and Le Monde.