The Voiceful Eight - An Evening of Literature and Music

As the pandemic seems to be on the wane, we escape our digital exile to return to in-person events with a celebration of Romanian-American women authors who have  been the focus of one of our most successful online programs, set up in partnership with Bucharest Inside the Beltway. Come and meet some of the female writers who have appeared in the “Romanian Women Voices in North America” series for an evening of readings, conversations, music and pure joy after months of isolation and boredom. Featuring Raluca Albu, Cristina A. Bejan, Clara Burghelea, Adina Dabija, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Claudia Serea, and Adela Sinclair. With a live performance by fusion pianist Mischa Blanos.  

Where & when: Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, March 4, doors open at 6:30 pm for a 7 pm start of the event. Free entrance. RSVP here.

Raluca Albu was born in Romania and raised in the Bronx. She has held editorial positions at Guernica, BOMB (where she seeks out underrepresented voices and stories), and NYU, where she teaches writing. Her work has been published in the Guardian, The Village Voice, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the deputy editor of Doctors Without Borders. She is the recipient of the coveted 2020 NYC Emerging Writers Fellowship. Albu is a graduate of Bard College and holds an MFA in writing and an MA in teaching from Columbia University. Her research interests include profiling creative makers and exploring unexpected ties between disparate communities. As a juror for the 2018 Best Translated Book Award and the 2020 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise, she enjoyed championing global perspectives in the arts. She's also worked on documentaries like "Requiem for the American Dream", "Nuns on the Bus", and "She's Beautiful When She's Angry". 

Cristina A. Bejan is an award-winning Romanian-American historian, theatre artist, and poet. A Rhodes and Fulbright scholar, she currently teaches history at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Bejan received her Masters and DPhil (PhD) in Modern History from the University of Oxford and her BA in Philosophy (Honors) from Northwestern. A playwright and spoken word poet (Lady Godiva), her creative work has appeared in the US, UK, Romania, and Vanuatu. Bejan runs the arts group Bucharest Inside the Beltway. She has published two books (history and poetry), a play in the anthology "Voices on the Move" (eds. Domnica Radulescu and Roxana Cazan), and 64 articles and the African continent introduction for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Vol. 3." Cristina will be reading from her poetry book entilted "Green Horses on the Walls".

Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her work was included in anthologies such as "Where Are You From?"(2017), "Peacock Journal- Anthology: Beauty First" (2018), "Persian Sugar" in "English Sugar Anthology. Vol. II" (2018) and "Omnibus!" (2020).  Her first book of poetry is entitled "The Flavor of the Other" and was published in 2020 at Dos Madres Press. Her second poetry collection "Praise the Unburied" was published with Chaffinch Press in 2021. Her poems have been translated into Farsi and French. She is Poetry Co-Editor for The Museum of Americana, a Literary Review and Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation. Clara writes in English and will read from her latest book,  "Praise the Unburied" .

Adina Dabija is a writer and thinker born in Aiud, Romania. She now lives in New York, where she practices acupuncture and hypnosis. Her first book, „poezia-papusa” ("the poetry - the doll"), was awarded the Bucharest Writers’ Association Guild Prize in 1998. She published "Stare nediferențiată" ("Undifferentiated State") in 2010 for which she was awarded the Tomis prize in Constanta, Romania. In 2011 she published "Beautybeast" (North Shore Press), her first collection of poetry in English, and in 2012, her first novel, „Șaman” ("Shaman"). Adina is currently working at four books: "Songs from my Garden", a poetry collection, "Nine Seeds for Life", a practical self-help book which combines narrative medicine from her native Romania with gardening and bio cognition, "Rumi’s Field", a novel on the mystical relationship between Rumi, the 12th century Sufi poet, and his companion Shams al Tabriz, and "Wise and Wild in America", a book of interviews with exponents of the traditional American values. Adina will be reading from her upcoming novel, "Rumi’s Field".

Mihaela Moscaliuc was born and raised in Romania. She is the author of the poetry collections "Cemetery Ink" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) and "Immigrant Model" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) and "Father Dirt" (Alice James Books, 2010), translator of Liliana Ursu’s "Clay and Star" (Etruscan P, 2019) and Carmelia Leonte’s "The Hiss of the Viper" (Carnegie Mellon U P, 2014), editor of "Insane Devotion: On the Writing of Gerald Stern" (Trinity U P, 2016), and co-editor of "Border Lines: Poems of Migration" (Knopf, 2020). She is the recipient of two Glenna Luschei Awards from Prairie Schooner and fellowships from Chateau de Lavigny, VCCA, and the MacDowell, and New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is graduate program director and associate professor of English at Monmouth University (New Jersey) and former poetry & translation faculty in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Drew University (New Jersey). Mihaela will be reading from her most recent poetry book,  "Cemetery Ink".

Claudia Serea’s poems and translations are published in "Field", "New Letters", "Prairie Schooner", "Oxford Poetry", among others. She received the "New Letters" Readers Award and was featured in the documentary "Poetry of Witness" (2015). Her poems have been translated in Russian, French, Italian, Arabic, and Farsi, and have been featured on "The Writer’s Almanac". Serea’s most recent book is "Writing on the Walls at Night" (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Her collection of poems translated into Arabic, "Tonight I’ll Become a Lake into which You’ll Sink", was published in Egypt in 2021. Serea’s other collections include "Twoxism" (8th House Publishing, 2018), a collaboration with Maria Haro; "Nothing Important Happened Today" (Broadstone Books, 2016); "To Part Is to Die a Little" (Cervená Barva Press, 2015); "A Dirt Road Hangs from the Sky" (8th House Publishing, 2013); and "Angels & Beasts" (Phoenicia Publishing, 2012). Serea is a founding editor of National Translation Month.  Claudia Serea serves on the editorial board of The Red Wheelbarrow Poets and is one of the curators of the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Readings. Claudia will be reading from her freshly published book, "Writing on the Walls at Night".

Adela Sinclair is a NYFA Grant Winning Romanian-American poet, translator, and teacher. Fluent in English, French, and Romanian, poetry is her primary, though not exclusive, medium. Her forthcoming Chapbook, entitled "La revedere", is being published by Finishing Line Press and will be released in July 2022. Her poetry explores themes of cultural identity, memory, loss, trauma, and desire. Her work appears on "The Bridge", published by Brooklyn Poets, and Tupelo Press’ "30/30 Project". "On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Exploded", Adela’s poem is published in the Winter Anthology Healing Felines and Femmes by Other Worldly Women Press. Adela is currently working with an editor on her first full-length poetry collection, “The Butcher’s Granddaughter”, a lyrical memoir of her childhood in Romania. She holds a BA in French Culture and Civilization from SUNY Albany, with additional coursework at the Sorbonne University of Paris, an MA in Education from Hunter College (NYC), and an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from St. Francis College (Brooklyn). 

Attuning between two music worlds, clubbing and concert halls, Mischa Blanos has Romanian and Russian roots and took a sinuous way to art. Trained in classical piano with a long list of classical music awards, he was destined for a successful career in classical music, when he put a heavy brake and left it all for his love of electronic music. The piano never left his mind and fingers though, using it in pure acoustic mixed with morphed live sampling or shifting to the electronic family of keyboards and synths. Blanos has performed  in the world’s most famous clubs like Fabric, Rex Club, The Block, Gazgolder and notable festivals like ADE, Caprice or Sunwaves and is recognized for his ability to create a rich techno atmosphere with classical music hints lurking in the backdrop.

Important event info

Please be advised that, according to the New York state pandemic regulations, all guests will need to be fully vaccinated to enter the premises. They will have to provide proof of full vaccination along with an appropriate ID matching the name on their documentation.