Though The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes U.S. tour was months in the making, it still feels like a surprise. The multi-city tour is happening thanks to the generous support of all kinds from the Romanian Cultural Institute and Deep Vellum and other people and organizations they brought onboard. I’m excited that we’ll be in conversation with writers and translators Ali Kinsella (Chicago), Ena Selimović (DC), and Raluca Albu (NYC).

It will be the longest tour I’ve been on yet but I’m looking forward to seeing friendly faces in every city, including Dallas, which is a new one for me. What are my hopes?
-That we create more buzz about this beautiful book
-that we have good discussions about its important themes of death, family, fractured identities, and reconciliation
-that we raise more awareness about the art and work of translation
-that we help foster connections between people and the cultures of Romania, Moldova, and the U.S., with its many cultures.
You know, just a few little things.

Tatiana and I had a wonderful time together back in March at our launch during the London Book Fair so we have lots of reasons to be hopeful. The protagonist of the novel grows up in London so it felt especially meaningful, along with the fact that Romanian is now the most commonly spoken foreign language in London. I also participated on another panel talking about my translation of Liliana Corobca’s Too Great a Sky, an important book I happily talk about whenever I get the chance.

At the London Book Fair, I was lucky to attend talks about the work of translation organized by the National Writing Centre and Translators Association. It’s hard to believe that the broader conversation about having translators’ names on the cover of their translations only really began 5 years ago! That’s much more common now but we’re a long way from most people understanding that translators are writers and that a book doesn’t simply “appear” in another language. Ironically, AI translation might actually be helpful in revealing all the invisible human work of translation through its own limits.

In April, which is national poetry month in the States, I was delighted to be able to highlight the work of other translators. The Center for the Art of Translation asked me and a couple other translators to write a few poetry recommendations. I picked poets from Belarus, Italy, and Columbia. Unsurprisingly, all the translators are also poets I admire.

In May, I finished a sample of Gabriela Adameșteanu’s new memoir Work Unsuitable for Women, about how she became a writer during the Romanian communist period and the challenges she faced because of the politics, sexism, and her family history all intertwined. She did research into the National Securitate Archives and I was beyond honored that she chose lines from my poem It’s Time as an epigraph for one of the sections. I did a sample of a very different autobiography by the one of the founders of a hospital built entirely from private donations: Carmen Uscatu’s The Year I Didn’t Die. I also translated a few short stories from Cristian Teodorescu’s picaresque collection Medgidia, City of the Last Days which takes place shortly before, during, and after WWII (in the city where part of my family was exiled during the 50s).

One last translation experience this spring was not only translating a play for the first time, but also seeing it performed. I first came across playwright Alexandra Badea’s work through watching her play Exile at the National Theater in Bucharest and was enthralled. When I was invited to translate her new play Worlds for The Power of Storytelling conference, I jumped at the chance. Worlds is a dialogue between ex-lovers about increasing polarization and the tension between wanting to run away and engage it somehow. Watching the electrifying performance at the conference, I wished I could have translated the play even more specifically to the particular actors (one of whom was Badea) and even more to the particular international audience. Unfortunately it’s unlikely that my translation will ever be published since that’s rarer for plays, but it was amazing to see it come alive and I hope to have that opportunity again.

I’ll end this newsletter here because my gate is about to be posted and Tatiana is now waiting for me. Looking forward to seeing some of you in person soon!

Thank you for reading,
Monica

West Coast Mini-Tour

I had a wonderful event in October in Seattle with the American Romanian Cultural Society that led to an important epiphany. The kind of Romanian-Americans I’m most aligned with are the ones interested in contemporary Romanian culture, which almost always means they’re interested in other cultures as well. A focus on contemporary culture can be a crucial way to help circumvent narrow nationalisms. It’s important to me to continue working on creating the kind of cultural diasporic network I wish I had growing up and still want. I’m glad I’m not in it alone.

And I can’t say enough good things about LitQuake, San Francisco’s biggest literary festival. It felt delightfully outside the box and friendly. I was quite jetlagged but I made it to an event launching the English translation of Nadia Terranova’s novel The Night Trembles (trans. Ann Goldstein, Seven Stories Press). Everything Terranova said was brilliant and I regretted not feeling up to staying and meeting her afterward, but she came to my event the next evening!

The event was a “listening party” hosted by producer Camilo Garzón, with me, translator Noelle de la Paz, and voice artist Amanda Nazareno. Two Lines Press had partnered with Garzón’s Cuentero Productions to create sound art for three of its recent anthologies: Romanian poetry, Latin American horror stories, and Japanese fiction. We discussed what it was like to see our work transformed. Adela Greceanu’s poem “Copac”(“Tree”) felt like the warm, beating heart of the conversation because it beautifully reveals how we can never say what we mean enough, only signal to it through language and other art forms, as the fundamental human condition. You can listen to the sound art here –“Copac” is at 9:24 but I recommend the whole thing, with lovely poems by other wonderful poets and translators.

FILIT

After LitQuake, I raced back to Romania for FILIT, Romania’s largest literary festival, in Iasi. It was my second time as a guest here and what I really appreciate about it is how it seeks to bring literature to more people, with events for readers of all ages and visits to high schools, community centers, and a prison. I got to meet many wonderful people, like writers Tracey Chevalier, Nikola Scott, and Nick Bradley, and translators Laure Hinkel, Marian Ochoa de Eribe, and Matt Appleby. An especially moving moment was the performance of a group of Ukrainian poets, some of whom had fought on the front lines in the ongoing war.

The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation

In November, I had the incredible honor of being shortlisted for The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for Liliana Corobca’s Too Great a Sky, one of six on the list. I’ve had my eye on this prize for years! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the ceremony at the Shard in London in person because it was on Thanksgiving and I was in the States (my first time celebrating it there in 7 years!) but I got to participate online.

The committee asked me to select a short reading and introduce it. With an epic novel like Too Great a Sky, this wasn’t an easy task. A book is about so many things. I realized that for this prize, for this audience, I wanted to focus not on the horrors of deportation, not on the strength to survive, but on what comes after: the fight against one final injustice, that of being forgotten. It’s a fight we all contribute to by reading this novel.

I felt so strongly that the novel deserved to win that I even sketched out an acceptance speech just in case, something I’ve never done before. In doing so, and perhaps influenced by the presence of my family and the whole Thanksgiving mood, I realized that this memory work had been done for me as well. That I wouldn’t be in Bucharest translating Romanian literature if it weren’t for my family instilling memories of a homeland in me despite our displacement, for which I felt so grateful.

Too Great a Sky didn’t end up winning but it did receive a special commendation. The real prize for me was greater visibility for the book and the feeling of gratitude.

The Country of Leaving

The story of our displacement is scattered throughout my poetry. I’m very excited that I’ve collected my poems into my first full-length manuscript entitled The Country of Leaving. In mid-December, I went on an editing retreat rather than a writing retreat to a friend’s village home and ordered the poems. It felt almost magical how they read differently when placed next to different poems. Now the long process of submitting the manuscript has begun. And the writing of new poems.

Deep Vellum in Bucharest

Last month was a whirlwind with the visit of Will Evans, founder of Deep Vellum Press, to Bucharest, and the launch of my newest translation, The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes by Tatiana Tibuleac. It was another dream come true, to help facilitate the visit of an important U.S. editor to Romania in general and Will in particular, and it was thanks to Vlad Niculescu (bookseller at Carturesti and Friends) and the cultural foundation Scena9. Vlad was curating a season of talks on the publishing industry for them and invited me to join him for this episode and you can watch our conversation with Will here.

I loved introducing Will to some of my favorite people in Bucharest (including Adela Greceanu who interviewed him for Radio Romania Cultural, in Romanian here). So many Romanians found his views on publishing inspirational, and I think his philosophy of access to reading as a public service needs to become more widespread throughout the world. Reading connects people in crucial ways and it’s not too farfetched to say it’s a form of justice.

Right before the book launch for The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes in Bucharest, the book received an unexpected gift, a wonderful review in the New York Times. It felt especially surreal since at my talk at the PEN America festival in May last year, I had brought up a study that showed only 5% of books reviewed in NYT were translations. The launch was a fun event moderated by Paula Erizanu. With Will there, we were able to focus on the bigger picture of the book’s appearance in English. We were missing Tatiana, though, who was in Egypt in advance of the Cairo Book Fair.

London Book Fair

Thankfully Tatiana, Will, and I are reuniting in just a couple short weeks for the London book fair and the UK launch of The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes which the Romanian Cultural Institute has organized for us at Piccadilly Hatchards, London’s oldest bookstore. Last time I was in London, I had gone in just to dream a little about what it would be like to have an event there! The ever-inspiring Will Evans will also moderate a panel about recent Romanian literature in English and I’ll be speaking about Too Great a Sky at Waterstones King’s Road.

Until next time!

Thanks for reading,

Monica

And I’m also very excited to be going on a little literary tour starting next week and talk about the translations of mine that came out last year! On Wednesday I’ll be in Seattle discussing both my translation of Too Great a Sky by Liliana Corobca (Seven Stories Press) and the anthology of contemporary Romanian poetry Cigarettes Until Tomorrow (Two Lines Press) that includes my translations of poems by Adela Greceanu. The event is put on by the American Romanian Cultural Society.

And then on Thursday I’ll be in San Francisco talking about Greceanu again at a “listening party” as part of the Litquake Literary festival hosted by Camilo Garzón, along with Noelle de la Paz and Amanda Nazareno. Some very talented sound artists have transformed my translations into new works of art and I can’t wait for everyone else to get to experience them as well.

Afterward, I’ll return to Bucharest and fly out to Iasi to do events at Romania’s biggest literary festival FILIT. It’s always a wonderful time of meeting other writers and translators, as well as young readers. American-heavy programming this year with Tracey Chevalier and Junot Diaz!

Also coming soon, we finally have a release date for my translation of Tatiana Tibuleac’s novel The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes, January 13, and a cover! I love that I’ve been given a say in the covers of all my books so far because it’s something that really matters to me. This experience was unique because Deep Vellum commissioned a painter to create new artwork based on my translation. Read our reactions to the cover here and you can also already pre-order the novel here.

-In other translation news, Liliana Corobca and I gave an interview to Trafika Europa. If you’re in New York on October 23rd, you can catch her at European Literature Night at the Ukrainian Institute of America!

-More poems by Dan Sociu in my translation have appeared in The High Window Romanian supplement along with work by other talented Romanian poets and translators. I’m currently on a fellowship for Professional Translators from the Romanian Cultural Institute here to finish up my translation of a volume of his selected works for World Poetry Books and working furiously.

-I finished a sample for a very unique project, a retro YA adventure series that was a bestseller in Romania in the ‘50s and ‘60s—Ciresarii, or in English, The Cherry Tree Gang. The nostalgia is strong for this one in the diaspora! It was also very fun to read the Romanian counterpart of the books I liked at that age, so nostalgic for me in a different way.

-I just finished a sample of Tatiana Tibuleac’s newest release, When You’re Happy, Strike First. Another powerful novel by her.

Writing-wise, last month I helped organize and participated in a wonderful literary event as part of Street Delivery, Bucharest’s oldest street festival. This summer fellow poet-translators Anca Roncea and Raj Chakrapani, and poets Mina Decu and Andra Rotar, and I had started a bilingual writing group about Bucharest we named Memorator de Bucuresti/Bucharest RAM. For Street Delivery, we did a free workshop for the public in partnership with the historic Anglican Church of the Resurrection, as well as a reading the next day. Hopefully more to come soon.

Until soon, thanks for reading,

Monica

To catch up, AWP was wonderful. I connected with all the poets I’d been hoping to meet in person (and more!) as well as people from presses that I’ve been working with. The best panel I attended was on Video Poetry, which is something I’ve been wanting to explore. If you’re curious as well, I recommend the Cadence Video Poetry Festival website (my favorite in this set, and perhaps ever so far, is The Melting).

If you missed the online event on Translation and Censorship for the UK Milton Keynes festival, you can check out the audio recording here. Stemming from someone listening in, Sawad Hussain and I got last minute invitations to continue the conversation at the PEN America World Voices Festival in New York on May 3rd! Getting flown out, staying at the festival hotel in Manhattan, receiving passes to all the other literary events, our event in a storied East Village theater—dreamance for days. I only wish there were a recording of it as well. For me it was a quite personal reflection on the nature of market censorship and gender censorship.

In other translation news, poems by Dan Sociu that I’ve been translating for the 2026 collection from World Poetry Books have now appeared in Gulf Coast Magazine (print version) and the June issue of Plume. In the same issue of Plume, you can read more of my translations of poems by the wonderful Adela Greceanu.

Now, a bit about prizes. Since my last newsletter, my translation of Too Great a Sky by Liliana Corobca got shortlisted for the EBRD prize. The competition was stiff, including The Empusium by Nobel-prize winner Olga Tokarczuk translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and we didn’t win, but we were happy the prize went to another Seven Stories Press title.

In the same period, I got a behind-the-scenes view of literary prize judging by being the inaugural guest judge of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the prize I had won in 2023 for Liliana Corobca’s The Censor’s Notebook. I enjoyed reading such a wide variety of new translations, and even the process of coming to consensus with my lovely three fellow judges, professors at different Oxford colleges. By the time we assembled the incredible short list, any one of the titles really could have won the prize based on literary merit, the skill of the translator, and the timeliness of the book. At the end of three gorgeous summer days in Oxford, I had the honor of announcing Jellyfish Have No Ears by Adèle Rosenfeld, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, as the winner of the 2025 prize at the awards ceremony.

Hayden’s Ferry Review also just announced that I was a poetry finalist in their annual contest. Though it doesn’t come with publication, which is always a prize in and of itself, the appreciation is such a boost, of course.

And finally, a new poem of mine sees the light of day in Poet Lore (print version), the oldest poetry journal in the U.S. and one that I have long admired! I leave you with it. Until next time.

Thanks for reading,

Monica

Translation-wise, I spent much of the time doing samples of novels. Running anywhere from 10-30 pages, samples are a standard part of any translated book proposal, especially if the author isn’t well known, but it’s helpful even if they are.

-Gabriela Adamesteanu is one of most accomplished contemporary Romanian writers and has been translated to great acclaim especially in French and Spanish, but only one of her novels has been translated into English so far. I was fortunate to able to translate a couple chapters from Provisional States, the second book in her Letitia Branea trilogy. It is promisingly currently under consideration at several presses.

-I also got to translate a sample from the recently published biographical novel Saint No. 6 by Tatiana Niculescu. It brilliantly tells the inspiring story of Cardinal Iuliu Hossu, who went from diplomatic dinners at the royal palace to cleaning latrines as a political prisoner at Sighet under the communist regime but never lost his spirit. He was beatified in 2019 by Pope Francis.

-A Romanian publishing house commissioned samples of two recent young adult novels by for the Leipzig Book Fair. To the best of my knowledge, no YA Romanian novels have been translated into English yet. The advantage of an English language sample is that it can often be used to sell the foreign rights into other languages as well.

-I was also commissioned to translate an excerpt of Romania’s submission for the European Union Prize for Literature. This year’s nominee is Bogdan Cretu with his novel Less Than Love. It’s a Romeo and Juliet story with historical and psychological insights where the son of a political prisoner and the daughter of his former torturer fall in love.

In other exciting translation news, I’ve signed a contract to translate a book of poetry selections by Dan Sociu with World Poetry Books. Not only that, but I was recently awarded a professional translator’s grant from the Romanian Cultural Institute for it. This kind of support is so crucial, especially for poetry.

My first translation event of the year, on Monday March 31st, will be online so everyone who wants to can join! As part of the UK Milton Keynes festival, I’ll be in dialogue with Sawad Hussain, the co-translator of Bothayna Al-Essa's novel The Book Censor's Library (The Guardian of Surfaces in the UK edition) about Liliana Corobca’s The Censor's Notebook, and translation and censorship. You can sign up here.

I’ll be tuning in from Los Angeles where I’m heading right now for my first ever AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference and book fair this week. I’d been curious about it for a while and since it’s in LA this year, I couldn’t resist. I hear it’s a bit like drinking from a water hose with all the fantastic scheduled sessions and off-site readings, but I’m especially interested in getting to know a few poets I’ve only interacted with so far online and meeting some others.

I’m looking forward to sharing how it went and more news soon!

Thanks for reading,
Monica

Summer and early fall were consumed in Bucharest with the final stages of the neuroscience and art project SENSE that I mentioned back at the beginning of the year. The final form it took was something that looked more like a traditional play, but included key elements, brain wave monitoring of the actresses and audience votes in real time, that changed the outcome of each performance, and an interpretative dialogue with the audiences. Besides doing the research, I helped shape the script concept, and I designed and led the dialogues. It was an incredible learning process, both in learning about the scientific evidence of our interconnectedness as well as in learning how to help people experience it artistically. The power of dialogue was truly affirmed for me each night as audiences realized “Sense is a relationship between all of us.” (interview in Romanian)

In the midst of that, I took a week off to travel to the idyllic village of Ipotesti, where Romania’s national poet Mihai Eminescu grew up, for a translation residency sponsored by the memorial museum there and the literary museum in Iasi. It was fantastic getting to spend time with translators of Romanian literature from ten different countries, as far away as Uruguay. We worked hard, both on our translations and at developing inside jokes.

Then in October, Liliana Corobca and I went on a mini-tour to the U.S. to promote our newest translation together: Too Great a Sky. Our first stop was in Boston for the Transnational Literature Series held at Brookline Booksmith where got to have a conversation with a generous reader, Jennifer Clarvoe, who had been my poetry professor at Kenyon College! I’m glad the decision was made to record it:

From there we went to NYC where we visited the Seven Story Press home base in Tribeca. Our reading was at the Book Culture bookstore on 112th (just down the street from Tom’s Restaurant from the Seinfeld show). The audience was a fun mix that included students interested in translation from Columbia and NYU, people connected to the press, friends of mine from LA who had moved to New York, and even a cousin. We had a wonderful time and I’m happy to say Liliana’s first visit to the States was a great success.

The victory lap continues in Bucharest where we’re putting on a little event tomorrow at Carturesti and Friends to give the community here a chance to connect with the book. Since the book has already been launched, the concept is a signing where we ask the questions (of people who have already read the book or are interested in it).

If you’d like to know what questions we’ve already answered, I did an interview which appeared in Apofenie and we did one together in Asymptote. The book has gotten lovely reviews in Words Without Borders and the Times Literary Supplement.

More on the translation front, the anthology of contemporary Romanian poets in English translation I mentioned earlier this year is out: Cigarettes Until Tomorrow by Two Lines Press. It was a great honor that my translations of three poems by Adela Greceanu were also picked up by the Dial Magazine and you can read them here. I recommend the whole anthology for the other great translators and poets.

And the last bit of translation news, which I’m premiering in this newsletter for those of you who have made it to the end, is that I just finished my translation of The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes by Tatiana Tibuleac for Deep Vellum press, a book that was a bestseller both in Romania and in Spanish translation. It has an early 2026 release date, but there’s a rumor that a literary magazine is considering publishing an advance excerpt, we shall see.

I leave you with this random article on postcards and cat memes, for which I was interviewed by the BBC. Every now and then I’m reminded I’m still one of the world’s foremost postcard theorists. Life is strange but beautiful. I wish you all happy holidays and . . . a promising new year.

Thanks for reading,

Monica

For those of you who enjoyed the Sci Fi stories of Gheorghe Săsărman from my last newsletter, you might be interested in the White Review Anthology published in April, full of fantastic translations of writers from all over the world, including a few more stories by Săsărman. When I was asked if I’d like to do a reading at the launch in London, I couldn’t resist and hopped over to London on a cheap flight for a few days just for that and to visit a couple friends. It was a blast and so worth it. Have I mentioned how much I love living not only in Romania but in Europe?

In other translation related news, Bucharest recently hosted Bookfest, the largest book fair in Romania, and the Romanian Cultural Institute organized a panel on Romanian literature in translation which included five translated writers and me. The writers shared their experiences being translated and I spoke on the ecosystem of translation and what is needed to increase the impact of Romanian literature abroad, especially connections with presses in the U.S. and UK. This year the Republic of Moldova was the guest of honor and I also enjoyed hearing different perspectives on Moldovan identity and meeting Dumitru Crudu, whom I recently translated, in person.

Poetry-wise, I have a new poem out in Graywolf Lab called “Pitești,” and two in Four Way Review’s online magazine, “Month to Month” and “Off Season.” I’m especially excited about this because these publications are connected to excellent presses, which I take as a good omen. I’m only a couple poems away from starting to submit my collection to publishers.

In the meantime, I had the incredible good fortune to be one of eight international poets invited by the Lithuanian Writers’ Union for the 80th edition of their famed Poetry Spring festival. Besides our readings in Vilnius, we were split up into groups with Lithuanian poets and read our works in cities, towns, and villages throughout Lithuania. My poems were translated by former Lithuanian poet laureate Marius Burokas and he was part of my group so we worked out a performance where we alternated reading in English and Lithuanian. I wowed audiences with my newly acquired phrases in Lithuanian (and hopefully my poetry) and now I feel I finally know what it’s like to be part of a band on tour. I’m already thinking of how to bring some Lithuanian poets over to Romania.

L-R: Mari-Liis Müürsepp (Estonia),Vasyl Makhno (Ukraine/USA), Monica Cure (USA/Romania), Yekta (France), Yuki Nagae (Japan), Indrė Valantinaitė (Lithuania), and Anna Piwkowska (Poland). Not pictured: Marija Luīze Meļķe (Latvia) and Aleš Šteger (Slovenia)

Another wonderful poetry experience last month was speaking to a large group of creative writing students from Northern Kentucky University at the invitation of poet and professor Kelly Moffett who organized a study tour for them in Romania. I created what I called an “emotional map” of Romania’s geography and history for them through readings of my poems and stories about my family and personal experiences here. Then I took them on a quick “hipster tour,” skewed heavily in favor of good coffee, because that’s what jetlagged writers need for inspiration.

I also got to connect with students from the Romanian American University by creating a six-part speaker series for them called “The Future Now” at the invitation of the American Studies Center there. The bi-weekly events are dialogues between me and friends who are innovative and successful in their different fields but who also have a broader perspective on what matters in life.

Finally, a lecture on how to read poetry which I delivered over a decade ago, and seemingly in another life, is making the rounds again in edited form, highlighting Emily Dickinson’s definition of poetry—perhaps some of you have already seen it. It reminded me of a project I keep thinking about. I’m wondering how many of you would be interested in subscribing to a short monthly newsletter in which I write about a poem, contemporary or otherwise, in a way that helps give guiding principles to interpretation? I think it’s something I’d like to do if I get a minimum of 10 pledges.

As always, thanks for reading this update, and enjoy the summer!

Monica

The first poem was published right on January 1st in beautiful Poetry Northwest: “Water News,” a tri-lingual poem that took me years to write after the idea came to me.

The second was the poem “Lines,” which I had written fairly quickly but then submitted to magazines for years until it was accepted by none other than Salamander, a print-only journal I’ve dreamed of being published since undergrad (along with Kenyon Review, which happened last year). I was especially lucky that contributor copies were mailed out in February, right when I was visiting my family in Detroit, so I asked for it to be sent there and received it faster.

Two of my poems were published in Action, Spectacle—it was the first time an editor had ever solicited poems. Another two appeared in the Common Ground Review.

On the translation front, Kinderland has been getting wonderful reviews, my favorite of which is in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Liliana and I also gave a joint interview to PEN transmissions. I just finished up edits for our third novel together. The working title, as you may know, was The Journey’s End, but now I’ve been given license to change it completely, so the translation will be entitled Too Great a Sky.

I’ve had fun translating shorter pieces in several genres lately.

- I was asked to translate non-fiction by another Moldovan author, Dumitru Crudu, for LCB diplomatique, an international platform where writers reflect on political aspects of their everyday lives.

- I translated samples of Young Adult fiction for a Romanian publishing house—hopefully a bigger project will materialize from them.

- For Science Fiction fans, you should definitely take a look in the Sci Phi Journal at the short fiction of Gheorghe Săsărman who wrote a collection of vignettes describing different imagined cities in the 70s, some of which were translated by Ursula K. Le Guin and now others by me.

- Finally, I’m thrilled I have translations of poems by Adela Greceanu coming out in a new anthology of contemporary Romanian poets, alongside translations by friends (I know all of them besides one!). The excellent volume by Two Lines Press is available for pre-order.

In January, I began work on a very exciting interdisciplinary collective art project called Sense, which has been awarded grants so far by the Romanian government and Culture Moves Europe. Putting neuroscience into conversation with art, the project explores how we make sense of things together and will culminate in a performance in the fall that dramatizes the process. I was brought on by the artistic director to head the research and create dialogues for the team members and for audiences, as well as writing expertise. In March, we did a two week residency in Luxembourg at Galerie39 that included research under the supervision of world-renowned neuropathologist Michel Mittlebronn, running experiments at Emile Mayrisch Hospital, and a performance. I hope to share insights with you soon.

This first quarter of 2024 has been so incredibly full that I’m just going to pretend it’s still March 31 and save April for my next missive. If you’ve made it this far, you’re definitely my people—do you think I should try to send out a newsletter every 2-3 months rather than every 3-4?

I hope this season is bringing you a sense of new life as well!

Monica

When it comes to publishing writing, fit is always an important criteria, but it might be more a consideration for certain works than others. My faith is an important aspect of my life and for that very reason, I’m wary of anything reductive of it. So when I decided to publish a poem in which it’s a central theme, I wanted to find a publication that would provide a fitting context without pigeon-holing it. Fortunately, Letters Journal out of Yale Divinity School saw my poem in the same light: https://www.lettersjournal.com/beginning-with-the-stairs/

Since my last newsletter and through October, I was basically consumed with the translation of a third novel by Liliana Corobca. I had previously mentioned the title as The End of the Road but after finishing my translation, I felt strongly that it should be The Journey’s End, so that’s what it will be released as next fall (fingers crossed). The main character narrates her experiences of being deported to Kazakhstan by the Soviets in World War II but also her survival of it and what happens after, and what she still hopes for now in her old age. The End of the Road, which was the working title assigned to the project before I was brought on as the translator, didn’t seem to encompass all that.

In November, my translation of Kinderland by Liliana Corobca was released! Unfortunately, government funding for book launches in New York and Boston fell through at the last minute (a learning experience), but nothing could steal our joy and we had a delightful launch in Bucharest at my favorite small bookstore, Cărturești & Friends. I came up with the concept of a tiny launch where Liliana and I did personalized readings of short passages for everyone who came through open-house style, rather than any big speeches. It was especially fitting for Kinderland, which is narrated through the eyes of a child.

(photo credit: Beatrice Șerban)

Though the launch was tiny, the novel is making some big waves through its selection as Asymptote’s international book club’s selection for the month of November. It also received favorable reviews in The Guardian/Observer and Financial Times. For those of you daunted by the length of The Censor’s Notebook, Kinderland is much more accessible—a short, poignant read about a contemporary issue in the Republic of Moldova (but also in Romania and globally). The book is available directly from the Seven Stories Press and Seven Stories Press UK websites.

In other translation news, I was asked for translations of Romanian poetry for the journal Apofenie, which specializes in writing from this part of the world, on the theme Rekindling. I ended up sending in works by poets from different generations—we’re in need of rekindling at all the different stages of our lives, no? You can find the three here as well as lots of other interesting writing: https://www.apofenie.com/rekindling-autumn-2023-issue.

As for dialogue, I had an amazing time creating a dialogue for The Shuffle Collective in September that tackled the question "What does AI mean for the future of creativity?" with a group of knowledgeable panelists and curious participants. For two hours, we did a deep dive into the issue, including our experiences and feelings related to it. I'm glad it was recorded because it really serves as a fantastic introduction to something that is still in development (as well as my collective dialogue methodology). The video is available on the group’s YouTube channel.

Finally, I’d like to extend a very last minute invitation for an online dialogue I’m leading for the Bucharest Urban Readers book club on Monday 7pm EET (12pm EST) on the play Mad Forest by Caryl Churchill. Every December the community book club does a reading related to the 1989 Romanian Revolution and Mad Forest is a masterful work on precisely that. A bit of personal history is that the fall after I went back to Romania for the first time, the fall I started high school, Mad Forest was chosen as the fall play at our suburban Detroit public high school—and I tried out and got a part! It was beautiful and surreal. I’m excited to be revisiting the play for basically the first time since then. You can message the organizers or me if you’re interested in joining the Zoom.

Have an amazing end of the year and wonderful holidays, and looking forward to connecting in 2024!

Monica

My latest trip was, in fact, a writing retreat to a village near the medieval city of Sighisoara. Generous friends lent me and a friend the use of their cottage, which they had lovingly and beautifully renovated. This is the second summer in a row when I’ve been able to go off for a week to a rural area to write and it’s incredibly life-giving. I decided to dedicate the time to diving back into my book on dialogue, which I had taken a long break from during my previous travels to the States. My focus during the week was transitioning from what I had written about the preconditions for dialogue into a new section about the elements necessary for participating well in dialogue. The first element is curiosity and I was able to experience it as well as write about it while talking to our village neighbors and visiting the historic fortified churches in the area, built centuries ago by the Romanian Saxon minority.

Dialogue and writing were also combined in one of the highlights of this season. Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer prize winning author and my former professor at the University of Southern California, came to do an event in Bucharest. His Romanian publishers, Art press, invited me to take part in the event and even help plan certain aspects. How could I say no? Viet’s visit to Bucharest was basically a dream come true ever since I read The Sympathizer. I saw so many important connections between Vietnam, the U.S., and Romania in what he had written. The feedback on the event has been incredible, a truly special moment, and you can watch it here.

Another writing and dialogue highlight was participating in a speaker series designed by Fulbrighter Allie Rigby called “Telling Stories with Impact,” where I met a few of you new subscribers! I talked a bit about what I do and then focused on the power of questions in saying the unsaid. It’s always incredible to meet like-minded people and I absolutely loved working with Allie. Her first full-length poetry collection, Moonscape for a Child, is coming out in September and you can follow her on Instagram @allie.j.rigby to find out more.

Last, but certainly not least, are my translation updates. A LOT has happened. About a month after my latest newsletter, I found out that I was on the longlist for the Oxford-Weidenfeld prize for my translation of The Censor’s Notebook by Liliana Corobca. It was a huge honor, especially considering that it was my first full-length novel translation. Almost immediately after, I was given the top-secret knowledge that I made the short list, with seven other translators. The advance notice was so I could make arrangements to attend the ceremony in Oxford where they would announce the winner, if I wished. I thought it would be an amazing opportunity to meet other translators and talk about translation even if I didn’t win, so I changed my schedule and bought my tickets. It also didn’t hurt that my fantastic time at the London Book Fair had whet my appetite for a quick return to London to reconnect with more friends, meet with an editor, and see some exhibitions I had missed.

Amazingly, I won the Oxford-Weidenfeld prize that night in Oxford! And I learned a lot. The creation and maintenance of a literary prize is hard work. The prize was founded in 1999 and is run by three Oxford colleges. The four judges read scores of books and spent months deliberating. Prizes also need to be funded consistently, they need to be understood and seen as legitimate, and publicized. In return, they help shape the literary landscape and, as in the case of the Oxford-Weidenfeld prize, draw attention to something valuable that has been overlooked. I see this as a win not only for myself and Liliana, for The Censor’s Notebook and for Seven Stories Press, but also for Romanian literature in English, and for Romanian culture abroad. I have to say that as a professional translator I’ve already started to feel its boosting effect. I’ve been asked to give interviews (here’s one I did for the oldest literary magazine in England) and, for the first time, I’ve received a solicitation for a translation from a prestigious literary magazine rather than me having to submit one and wait to hear back.

In other translation news, since I last wrote, I finished editing my translation of Liliana Corobca’s second novel, Kinderland. The release date is mid-November and I’m especially excited because this is one of the few novels soon to be available in English depicting life in the Republic of Moldova, and maybe the only one depicting contemporary rural life. Despite it being a country whose official language is Romanian, before moving to Iasi for my Fulbright in 2017, a city close to the border of the Republic of Moldova, I barely knew anything about it. Things are looking promising for a couple book launch tours, probably in New York and London. I’ll let you know!

I’m also now working feverishly on a third novel by Liliana Corobca, The End of the Road. It takes us back in history to the deportation of Romanians by the USSR from the part of Bucovina that is now in Ukraine in 1941 during WWII. It feels incredibly timely, and with a fall deadline, I’ve got my work cut out for me!

As always thanks for reading!

Monica

January definitely started off a bit more leisurely and began a trend where my different practices (writing, translation, and dialogue) overlapped. My writing goal was to work every morning on a non-fiction manuscript that is basically a primer on dialogue—what it is, how to create a value for it, how to foster the skills necessary for engaging in it, both on individual and group levels. I had already created a structure for this book during a writing retreat I did with a friend last summer, but hadn’t gained much ground since then. I theorized that what had worked well during my retreat was gaining momentum by working on the same project every day, so that was my six-week experiment. And it succeeded—I now have a rough draft of about a quarter of the book (the first section, on the preconditions for dialogue).

The trend continued in February when I received an amazing invitation to take part in a week-long tour of U.S. women writers with the U.S. embassy through three Romanian cities: Bucharest, Brasov, and Timisoara. I joined writers Brenda Flanagan and Nina Smart as we did events at schools, with groups of women writers, and with the general public. Depending on the audience, we did a combination of sharing our personal stories of how we became writers, reading our works, and engaging in dialogue. I especially enjoyed facilitating a modified version of collective dialogue for two of the events on the questions “How do we create a just society?” and “What is the role of women writers in society?”

My focus translation-wise has been on editing. I just finished the first round of edits for my translation of Kinderland, the second novel by Liliana Corobca I’ve translated. I’m anticipating one more round of minor edits when it gets back from the copy editor. Liliana and I were both asked for our feedback on the choice of cover and I’m extremely happy with the final result. It gives such a good sense of the unique subjectivity of an imaginative and precocious 12 year old raising herself and her younger brothers while her parents are working abroad in Italy and Siberia. It captures both the lightness and the darkness of the book. I’m excited that it can now be pre-ordered for its fall release date!

Something else that finally came out were my experimental translations of Diana Iepure’s poems for The Kenyon Review! Being published in its pages has been a dream of mine ever since I was 18 and went to Kenyon College to become a writer. These translations really show how blurry the line between translating and writing is. A bonus is that these poems for the spring issue were selected by guest editors Jennifer Croft, Anton Hur, and Jeremy Tiang—all translators I really admire who work hard to promote the value of translation. This fantastic issue should be available for purchase on their website soon, but for now here are some photos of my contribution.

And speaking of promotion, I’ve been working hard to promote The Censor’s Notebook during my month-long visit to the States. Last week I was in LA and I did a reading at the University of Southern California, hosted by the department where I got my PhD. On Wednesday next week, I’ll be at Sidetrack books for a reading in Royal Oak, MI—one town over from where I grew up. And then one day after I’m set to arrive in Bucharest, I’ll be flying out to London to do an off-site event during the London Book Fair with Liliana Corobca herself!

Liliana and I have become friends as well as having an excellent working relationship, which is great given the latest news—I just signed a contract with Seven Stories Press for a translation of a third novel by her. This one deals with a family who was deported to Kazakhstan in 1941 when the Soviets took over part of the Bucovina region of Romania… I know the process of translating this important story will be intense but I’m very much looking forward to it.

Thanks for reading, and until soon!

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On an adventure…

As many, but not all, of you know, I blew up my life a few years ago. In the fall of 2017, I left Los Angeles, California, on a sabbatical from my university, to teach American literature at a university in Iasi, Romania, on a Fulbright grant for a year. Reconnecting with my roots helped me decide to make a radical change. In 2019, I moved to Bucharest and left academia for a life of writing, translating, and dialogue.

At first, the decision seemed a little crazy, but everything started falling slowly into place. What I lost in security, I gained in freedom and joy.

My newsletter

Last year I finally launched my website. While I value it for its professional appearance, I decided starting a newsletter would give a better sense of my journey, this work in progress. For now the plan is to write updates with links to poems I’ve published, translations I’ve done, and advances I’ve made in my dialogue work, along with the context of my life. The goal is to write 3-4 short newsletters a year (this introductory and end-of-the-year newsletter will be a bit longer than most).

In the future I may decide to create new subscription projects here based on interest (a weekly close reading of a poem? a monthly translation of a Romanian writer? reviews of the most interesting places to visit in Bucharest? collective dialogue prompts?) but for now I think it’s a good home for personal updates.

Writing

When I began publishing my work a couple years ago, I learned that two things, not directly related to writing, are essential to literary life: overcoming fear of rejection, and patience. In 2021, I submitted my poems to 80 magazines and contests. Three of them got accepted, all in places I love, but waiting for them to appear was hard.

My poem “Sheer” appeared in the RHINO 2022 print issue (#46). My physical copy took awhile to reach me in Bucharest but it was lovely to have it in my hands along with the work of many other poets I admire. Here’s a photo of my poem, which I kind of love because the paper of the physical copy is somewhat sheer itself and it’s as if the words themselves were backlit. The entire issue can be purchased here.

My poem “A Country of My Mother” was published in The Shore poetry magazine. The quick turn around here (it got accepted the day after I submitted it and was published the next month) was a special gift because it had originally been accepted last year by a cool new magazine that ending up folding. I had made the difficult decision to withdraw the piece from what was to be their final issue because I wasn’t sure if it would still be accessible to readers afterwards.

“It’s Time” was a semi-finalist in Boston Review’s 2021 annual poetry contest and was slated to be published this year. I don’t enter many contests because of the often expensive entry fees but this one was waived for poets outside the U.S. Besides that kind detail, they managed to publish it before the end of the year despite a change in editors, and I even received a small honorarium.

Translation

Speaking of waiting, the biggest news of the year is the publication (finally!) of my first full-length novel translation, The Censor’s Notebook by Liliana Corobca, published with Seven Stories Press. I had translated the nearly 500 page novel in 4 months in 2020, edited it with the press in the fall of 2021, given input on the formatting this summer, and it was finally released this fall, first in the UK and then in the U.S. On November 10th, we had a book launch at the beautiful Carturesti Verona bookstore in Bucharest.

We’ve received excellent reviews of the book in Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and Los Angeles Review of Books and I’m grateful to the reviewers.

I’ve already completed the translation of a second novel by Liliana Corobca, Kinderland, for Seven Stories Press. It tells the story, through the eyes of a precocious 12-year-old girl, of children in villages in Moldova whose parents have gone to work abroad and left them behind. The process of editing the manuscript should begin soon.

Another project I was especially fond of was getting commissioned to translate an excerpt of Raluca Nagy’s novel Teo from 16 to 18, which was Romania’s nomination for the 2022 European Union Prize for Literature. The novel is very experimental and cosmopolitan, with lots of word play, and a feminist message. It’s the kind of book that teaches you how to read it as you keep going and creates its own world. For taste, part of my excerpt can be found towards the bottom of this page by clicking on the yellow “Excerpt-Translation” tab.

For fun, I translated poems by Moldovan poet Veronica Ștefăneț and they were published in Columbia Journal and Circumference Magazine. I love so many things about her poetry, not least the recurring motif of travel of all kinds, including back and forth between Moldova and Romania.

Another personal translation project this year was one that was especially meaningful to me. My grandfather, Simion Cure, had been a Romanian Baptist pastor as well as a writer of religious poetry, and had been imprisoned for his faith during the totalitarian communist regime. Decades later, a poem he wrote was set to music by composer Nicolae Moldoveanu (who had also been imprisoned in the same years) and the song became a popular Christmas carol in their religious communities. I translated the lyrics into English and it was sung by the choir of the Anglican Church of the Resurrection in Bucharest. Listen to it here and read more about the process in this guest blog post.

A final bit of news is that I was selected as a participant in this year’s FILIT (International Festival of Literature and Translation in Iași) translator workshop alongside translators of Romanian literature from a total of 13 countries. My project was a sample from a children’s book by surrealist poet Gellu Naum about the travels of a singing penguin named Apolodor. Hopefully more on that in future newsletters…

Dialogue

This year also brought major news in the realm of dialogue. Thanks to its forward-thinking director, Joachim Umlauf, I had a wonderful collaboration with the Goethe Institut in Bucharest. I designed a series of three collective dialogues on cultural questions of international significance called “The Power of Thinking Together: Artists in Collective Dialogue” and held them over the course of the year.

For the participants and the audiences, it was a great introduction to collective dialogue, the methodology of dialogue I developed that begins with a question and mobilizes participants to come to the deepest possible collective understanding of it, forming their version of a working conclusion (as well as a sense of community).

I felt extremely fortunate that through this experience I got to meet figures from the world of art, culture, activism, and more, and benefit from their insights alongside them and the audiences.

The series kicked off with the question “What is censorship - really?” and brought together internationally renowned artist Dan Perjovschi, novelist Liliana Corobca, member of the Romanian National Anti-discrimination Council, Catalina Olteanu, the president of Active Watch (a watchdog organization for journalistic freedom), Liana Ganea, and HBO Europe creative producer Ioanina Pavel.

The second event gathered visual artists from different countries (Germany—Kristin Wenzel, Romania—Ioana Stanca, Nona Șerbănescu, and Beti Vervega, and Ukraine—Dasha Chechushkova) of different generations to answer the question “What kind of discrimination do women artists (still) face?”

The final event of the year was a more intimate collective dialogue on the question “What is the responsibility of writers to their audience?” which allowed a significant moment of local audience participation as I continue to experiment with forms. It was a special joy to get to dialogue with my fellow writers Magda Cârneci, Cătălina Stanislav, and Radu Vancu.

A word of thanks

If you’ve read this far, I’m extremely grateful for your interest in my work. Please feel free to leave me a comment or a question and I’d love to respond.