Ignas Šeinius

Ignas Jurkūnas (2 April 1889 – 15 January 1959), best known by his pen name Ignas Šeinius, was a Lithuanian-Swedish writer, publicist, and diplomat. Šeinius worked as a diplomat for the interwar Lithuania in the Nordic states, to which he immigrated after the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. He is best known for his novel Kuprelis (The Hunchback), which, along with Šeinius' other novels, was at the forefront of impressionism in the Lithuanian literature.

Biography Early years Ignas Jurkūnas was born on 2 April 1889 to a family of Lithuanian peasants in the village of , from which he would eventually create his pen name. He attended schools in both Gelvoniai and Musninkai. In 1908, he finished teachers' courses in Kaunas and Vilnius, and in the same year he passed an exam in St. Petersburg which officially allowed him to become a teacher. From then on he would be involved in the press, usually creating and publishing short poems.