Let Poetry Rule: Andreea Scridon’s "A Romanian Poem" Launches at the RCI

The rebellious prodigy of Romanian-American letters, poet, translator and editor Andreea Iulia Scridon, comes to RCI New York for the launch of her acclaimed book A Romanian Poem (MadHat Press), the melancholic, witty, romantic, and surreal collection of poetry complementing a flurry of new original work and translations she has completed during the pandemic. The English-educated Floridian, now based in the Romanian city of Cluj, in Transylvania, is accompanied by indefatigable author, translator and promoter of Romanian poetry in the English-speaking world, New York-based Paul Doru Mugur, the editor and co-editor of several massive anthologies of Romanian verse in English, with whom Andreea collaborated at his later effort, the anthology Natural Born Digitals, in preparation at Talisman Press.

Andreea Iulia Scridon (b. 1997) is a Romanian-American poet. She studied Comparative Literature at King’s College London and Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Across the Nile-Green Sky (Greying Ghost Press, 2022), Calendars (Broken Sleep Books, 2022), and Unicornucopia (Ethel Press, 2022). Her poetry collection in Romanian, Hotare (Borders), won second place in a national manuscript contest in 2021. She is the winner of the University of Oxford’s 2020 STAAR Editorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Oxford Review of Books Short Fiction Prize. A translator of Romanian literature into English, Andreea Iulia Scridon has translated two books of poetry, one of the short stories, and is the editor of an anthology of contemporary Romanian poetry.

Educated in Romania, France and the United States, Paul Doru Mugur (b. 1969) holds a doctorate in Medicine, is Associate Professor at Weill Cornell College of Medicine, and a specialist in hematology and medical oncology at Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He is also an accomplished author of poetry, prose, and scientific works. He was the founder and editor of the cultural magazine Respiro. His publications include: The Shield of Perseus (Publistar, 1999), Something Easy (Brumar, 2006), Born in Utopia: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Romanian Poetry (with Carmen Firan and Edward Foster, Talisman House, 2006), Locul nimănui, Antologie de poezie americană contemporană (Nobody’s Place. Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, in Romanian, Cartea Românească, 2006), Psychonautics (Curtea Veche, 2009, the English version in preparation at Meridian Arts), The Vanishing Point That Whistles: An Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (with Adam Sorkin and Claudia Serea, Talisman House, 2011), and Poeme din Zona de Tranzit, Antologie de Poezie Hispanică (Poems from the Tranzit Zone. Anthology of Hispanic Poetry, in Romanian, Tracus Arte, 2020).