Born on 14 November 1961 in Vilnius. Died 17 02 2007.
1979 - graduated from M.K.Čiurlionis Art School (now - Arts Gymnasium), 1985 - graduated from Vilnius Art Institute (now - Academy of Arts), majoring in graphics. In 1988-1991, during the Lithuanian Revival, she was an active contributor to the Sąjūdis publications "Sąjūdžio žinios", "Sietynas", "Atgimimas", and "Ziemeļ Atėnai". In 1993, Jurga Ivanauskaitė travelled to the East for the first time, and in 1995-1998 she spent most of her time travelling in the Himalayas, where she was interested in the Buddhist religion and philosophy: in Northern India, Nepal, Tibet. Upon her return, she became the Chairperson of the Lithuanian Tibet Support Group and was nominated for the Sugihara Foundation's "Diplomats for Life" Person of Tolerance Award in 2003. She has organised exhibitions of photographs, drawings and paintings: in 1998 a drawing exhibition "108 Mandalas", in 1999 a photography exhibition "Tibet - Another Reality".
In 1979, readers were introduced to the first works of Jurgė Ivanauskaitė - poems in "Moksleivys". In 1985, her first book, a collection of novellas, The Year of the Hills, appeared. In 1988, the novel The Children of the Moon was published, and in 1989, the collection of short stories How to Grow Fear. Later, Jurga wrote several more novels: The Gardens of Hell (1992), The Witch and the Rain (1993), Agni's Magic (1995), Blowing the Dreams (2000), Placebo (2003), The Fortress of the Sleeping Butterflies (2005): plays: Let's Not Play with the Moon (1987), Carousel (1989): children's books: 1991. In 1991, her own illustrated fairy tale Stebuklinga spanguolė (The Wonderful Cranberry), and in 2004, How Marsis searched for happiness on Earth.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė put her experiences and impressions from her travels in the East into the highly acclaimed books Exiled Tibet (With an introduction by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama). (1996), Journey to Shambhala. Essays.(1997), The Lost Promised Land. Essays (1999), a collection of articles and essays, The Alchemy of Travel (2003), and Tibetan Mandala (2004).
Although Jurga Ivanauskaitė is primarily known as a talented prose writer, she has also written poems throughout her life. Her first collection of poetry, Dance in the Desert, was published in 2004, and her last book, which she has yet to see a proof copy of, Ode to Joy, is due to be published shortly.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė's work has been translated into English, Latvian, Estonian, Russian, Polish, Croatian, Hungarian, Georgian, Ukrainian, French, German and Swedish. For her services to the Republic of Lithuania, she was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania, the 2005 National Prize for her openness to the world and its cultural diversity and her sense of changing values in her novels, and the 2006 World Intellectual Property Organisation's Creative Achievement Award.