Iconoclastic Writer Anca Mizumsky on "Those Who Buy Stars" and on Immigration as Moral Experience

Phoenix-based writer and psychologist Anca Mizumsky, one of the most poignant voices of Romanian diaspora, talks about immigration as trauma and personal reinvention and the artistic opportunities of a life between cultures, languages, and geographies as part of a European and American launching tour of her novel, Those Who Buy Stars (New Meridian Arts, 2024), a cinematic page-turner about love, power and the urge of immortality in the vein of Umberto Eco and James Clavell. With performative readings from the book by South African-American actress, visual artist, and author Arianne Banda, the star of the Theater for the New City’s “Freedom Summer”.

Anca Mizumsky is a Romanian author who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Her works include: East (poems, 1993), Letter of Discharge (poems, 1995), Paper Guillotine (poems, 2008), Anca of Noah’s Ark (poems, 2009), Beyond (poems, 2010), In the Softness of the Sky (poems, 2012); Far from Hemingway (short stories, 1989); My Suspended Land (essays, 2018), and Those Who Buy Stars (novel, 2022). The author's poems have been featured in two personal anthologies, Madugrada - Songs of Love and Fury (2013) and Metropolitana (2018), as well as in numerous Romanian and international group anthologies: Strong. Romanian-Polish Anthology (1997), 27 Romanian Poets (Stockholm, 2011), Mujer en la aduana - 10 poetas rumanas contemporáneas (Madrid, 2022). She has received several awards for poetry. Her poems are translated into Swedish, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Albanese, Czech, and Chinese. As a psychologist and social activist, Anca Mizumsky has published a long series of articles and essays, her main areas of interest covering the concepts of dignity as a social construct, collective trauma, expressive art therapy, and therapeutic writing.

Arianne Banda is a performance artist, painter, singer, and practitioner of Afro-Indigenous medicine. Born and raised in South Africa, she has resided in the US in recent years and currently lives in New York City. She has a BFA in acting from Boston University. Her recent acting credits include: “Bioadapted” (Transforma Theater, 2024), “Maiden Voyage” (Flea Theater, 2023), “Freedom Summer” (Theater for the New City, 2023). An avid forager and creator of herbal remedies and natural body products, Arianne is the author of Herbs and Plants for Food and Medicine (Microcosm Publishing, 2023).