A reading of US and Romanian poets, organized in collaboration with Bowery Poetry & the Romanian Cultural Institute.

Adela Greceanu is a writer and journalist at the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company, the Cultural Department. She debuted in 1997 with a poetry volume entitled Title of My Collection, which Preoccupies Me So Much… (Eminescu Publishing House) for which she won the “Cristian Popescu” Great Prize and the Prize of the Writer’s Society in Sibiu. There followed other poetry volumes such as Miss Quasi (Vinea, 2001), The Straight in the Heart Understanding (Paralela 45, 2004) and And the Words are a Province (Cartea Românească, 2014). For this last volume she received the Poetry Prize of the Cultural Observer Magazine and a nomination for The Best Book of the Year at the Romanian Book Industry Gala. In 2008, she published the novel entitled The Bride with Red Socks (Polirom Publishing House). In 2018, Adela won the French Boccaccio Prize for the short story But if. She has taken part in numerous literary festivals and events both in Romania and abroad. Fragments of her books were translated in German, English, Swedish, Dutch, French, Greek, Hungarian, and Bulgarian among others.

Svetlana Cârstean published her first poems in 1994, in the collective volume Family Picture, together with T.O. Bobe, Răzvan Rădulescu, Sorin Gherguţ, and Cezar Paul-Bădescu. Her individual debut, Vise Flower (2008), was awarded several important national prizes (by the Romanian Writers’ Union, by Literary Romania Magazine, “Mihai Eminescu” Prize and Radio Romania Cultural Department Poetry Award). The volume was also published in Sweden in 2013, by Rámus Publishing House, translated by the Swedish poet Athena Farrokhzad. In 2015, Svetlana published the volume Gravity (Trei Publishing House), later translated and published in Norway. In April 2016, the volume Trado, co-written with Athena Farrokhzad, was launched in Sweden by Albert Bonnier and Rámus Publishing Houses. In June 2019, the volume is due in Polish translation as well. For five years, Svetlana has been coordinating her own poetry collection at Pandora M Publishing House, and since 2016, she has been the coordinator of a new poetry series, Vorpal, at Nemira Publishing House. In 2015-2016, as a cultural manager, she was part of the curatorial team in charge with Bucharest’s proposal for the competition European Capital of Culture 2021. She has initiated and curates the “Wednesday Intersections”, a series of debates and conferences that takes place weekly at BRD Residence Scena9 and has reached its fourth season. Together with Ana Maria Sandu, she created the “Reading Incubator”, a workshop that encourages children and teenagers to read, write and exercise their critical thinking.

Andra Rotaru is a poet and the founder of the mixed-media and multilingual journal Crevice. She has initiated collaborations at the intersection of poetry and choreography (the dance performance Lemur, presented in the US and across Europe by choreographer Robert Tyree); poetry, fiction, and video (the documentary All Together, made during The International Writing Program 2014 with poet Raj Chakrapani); and photography (Photo-letter pairing, involving the Iowa community and IWP writers). She is the author of In a Bed under the White Sheet (2005); En una cama bajo la sábana blanca (the Spanish translation of her debut volume, 2008); Southern Lands (2010); Lemur (2012); Tribar (2018). Andra was awarded The Best Young Poet of Year Award at The Writers’ Gala in Bucharest (2013) for Lemur. The book was published in the US by Action Books in 2018 (translation by Florin Bican). A selection of translated poems from her newest book, Tribar (translator Anca Roncea), won the Asymptote Journal Close Approximations Contest (judge: Sawako Nakayasu) in 2017, made it into the final of the Gulf Coast Prize (translator: Anca Roncea, judge: Ilya Kaminsky) in 2018 and were nominated for Anomaly’s 2018 Pushcart Prize.

Claudiu Komartin published The Puppeteer and Other Insomnia in 2003, a poetry book that won the most important literary debut prizes in Romania, including “Mihai Eminescu” National Prize, Opus Primum. In 2005, he wrote the essay/manifesto The Generation 2000 – an Introduction. The same year, he published The Domestic Circus, which was awarded the Romanian Academy Poetry Prize. He also published A Season in Berceni, 2009, 2010; Cobalt, 2013; Dismembered, 2015, signed as Adriana Carrasco and introduced as a translation from Spanish of the late Mexican poet Adriana Carrasco; Masters of a Dying Art. Poems 2010-2017 (2017, 2018), which was awarded the Romanian PEN Award and “Matei Brâncoveanu” Prize. His work has been translated and published in German, Serbian, Turkish, and Bulgarian. Since 2009 he has been organizing regular readings and meetings, which brought to the  fore around 300 contemporary writers from Romania and all around the world. Since 2010 he has been 5th editor-in-chief of the Poesis International Magazine and of Max Blecher Publishing House. Claudiu is the co-author of two plays and he translated ten books into Romanian.