Marija Lastauskienė

Marija Lastauskienė née Ivanauskaitė (15 May 1872 in Šiauliai – 19 July 1957 in Kaunas) and her sister Sofija Pšibiliauskienė were Lithuanian sisters who wrote under the shared pen name Lazdynų Pelėda (Hazel Owl). Marija married Belarusian literary critic and politician Vaclau Lastouski (Lastauskas), but divorced after a few years. Her family, of Polish–Lithuanian nobility stock, was influenced by Polish culture. Therefore, her native language was Polish and she had difficulties writing in Lithuanian. Lastauskienė did not have formal education and self-educated reading various Polish authors. Encouraged by her sister, Lastauskienė began writing more actively. During World War I, the sisters moved back to their childhood home in Paragiai. In 1993 a monument to the sisters was erected in Vilnius (sculptor Dalia Matulaitė, architects Jūras Balkevičius and Rimantas Buivydas).

Marija Lastauskienė's younger daughter, Stasė (Stanisława) Lastauskaitė-Matulevičienė, was also a writer. Her best-known novel is Prie nykstančių gairių (, 1939).

Works She began writing at the age of seventeen and her first story Bez steru (Without a Rudder) was published in a Warsaw newspaper.

After her sister's death, Lastauskienė wrote in Lithuanian and her daughter corrected the language.