Are you ready to enjoy the beautiful sights, sounds, and tastes of Romania without a passport? Music4Romania (www.music4romania.org)cordially invites you to DOR: A Romanian Festival to be held at The Episcopal Church of St. Francis of Assisi (www.saintfrancisindiansprings.org, 3545 Cahaba Valley Road, Indian Springs, AL 35124) on Sunday, September 22, 2024, from 4:00 to 9:00 PM. A free, family-friendly event, the festival will include traditional music and dance, poetry, children’s activities, and an ongoing arts exhibit and silent auction benefiting Music4Romania. A seated dinner featuring Romanian cuisine will also be offered, at a charge of $20/person (children under 12 eat free). Activities appropriate for children will be provided throughout the duration of the festival. Everyone is invited and welcome!

For more info and to RSVP for the seated dinner, please email Dr. Alina Voicu at avoicu1970@gmail.com or call (205)807-5814. We look forward to seeing you on September 22!

FESTIVAL PROGRAM 

4:00 PM - ROMANIA: Land of Legends, Beauty, and Wilderness 

Learn a few interesting facts about beautiful Romania at a short presentation led by Alina Voicu and George Ponta highlighting the country’s rich history, mysterious legends, natural beauty, and painted monasteries, among others. Poems read by Romanian sculptor-poet Mircea Lӑcӑtuṣ will conclude the presentation. 

4:30 PM - Music & Dance Corner with Arrhythmia String Quartet 

Listen to traditional Romanian music and learn to dance one of the most famous Romanian folk dances, the Hora, at an interactive event featuring Arrhythmia String Quartet. The program will include beloved traditional selections such as Ciuleandra, Hora Mӑrṭiṣorului, Porumbescu’s Balada, and the Wedding Suite from Maramureṣ featuring the unique trumpet-violin. 

5:30 PM - Children’s Corner Children and all young at heart are invited to learn a few Romanian words, have their faces painted with traditional Romanian designs, and participate in various arts & crafts activities, including making Marṭiṣoare (traditional Romanian good luck charms) and Romanian bracelets. 

6:30 PM - Poetry Corner with Alina Ṣtefӑnescu Enjoy award-winning poet Alina Ṣtefӑnescu

Listen to Alina reading poems that draw Romanian folk idioms and myths into a father’s explanation to a daughter of why they left their homeland. There will also be various symbolic objects and folk art on display, most of it from Transylvania. The poems are dedicated to Alina’s father, Doru Ṣtefӑnescu. 

7:00 PM - Poftӑ Bunӑ (Bon Appétit): A Seated Romanian Dinner Spoil your taste buds by joining us for a seated dinner featuring some of the most popular and delicious traditional Romanian dishes. Featured on the menu will be Zacuscӑ (Vegetable spread), Ouӑ umplute (Romanian-style deviled eggs), Salatӑ de Boeuf (Vegetable and beef salad), Mӑmӑligӑ cu brȃnzӑ si smȃntanӑ (Polenta with cheese and sour cream), and Sarmale (Cabbage Rolls). Romanian desserts and wines will also be served. Please RSVP to avoicu1970@gmail.com by September 15. Cost per person is $20.00, children under 12 eat free. 

FEATURED DISPLAYS

-Arts Exhibit featuring painting, photography, sculpture, traditional folk costumes and more

-Silent Auction benefiting Music4Romania

In structural conditions that narrow what gets published, whether by political systems that legislate repressive ideologies against free speech or by economic structures that prevent critical and system-challenging work from being published, the zine works from a tradition of grassroots publishing. The zine isn't working to get into the elite circles (though sometimes it does): the zine is working to speak, to say, to share, and to imagine power differently.

In this zine-making workshop, join MCPF board member, celebrated writer and poet Alina Stefanescu as you endeavor to make your very own zine. Supplies needed: white paper (printer or otherwise), a writing utensil, glue, and optional collage materials (magazines, etc).

April 17th from 6 pm to 7 pm CST

FREE TO ALL.

REGISTER ONLINE HERE.

A poetry month celebration with the poets Adrian Dallas Frandle, Alina Stefanescu,and Leah Umansky. Hosted by Nicole Tallman.

ELJ Editions & Redacted Books present

The Be Well Reading Series' Celebration of Poetry Month

REGISTER ONLINE

Hosted by Nicole Tallman

Thursday, April 4, 7-8 p.m. EST via Zoom

Featured Readers: Adrian Dallas Frandle, Alina Stefanescu, & Leah Umansky

Bios:

Adrian Dallas Frandle (they/he) is a queer fish who writes to and for the world about its future. They are Poetry Acquisitions Editor at Variant Lit. Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth is out now with Kith Books. Adrian's work is published in various print and online journals. Read more at adriandallas.com.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). She serves as editor, reviewer, and critic for various journals and is currently working on a novel-like creature. Her new poetry collection will be published by Sarabande in 2025. More online atalinastefanescuwriter.com.

Leah Umansky is an educator, curator, collagist and writer in New York City. She is the author of Of Tyrant, and two other full-length collections of poetry, The Barbarous Century and Domestic Uncertainties, and two chapbooks, Straight Away the Emptied World and the Mad-Men inspired Don Dreams and I Dream. Leah earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. She has taught workshops to writers of all ages in such places as The Poetry School (UK), Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Visible Ink Program. She can be found at leahumansky.com, @lady_bronte on Twitter or @leah.umansky on Instagram.

Michael Martone, Madeline Simms, and Alina Stefanescu will be reading from recent work at Tuscaloosa’s very own Druid City Brewing Company.

Pure Products Reading with Martone, Simms, and Stefanescu
Thursday Nov. 3o, 2023

700 14th St, Tuscaloosa, AL, United States, 35401

Sponsored by the University of Alabama English Deparment of English.

More information on Facebook Pure Products Reading page.

On zoom. Registration details forthcoming.

Co-editors Roxana Cazan and Domnica Radulescu will launch their second edited anthology, Immigrant Voices in the Pandemic, on September 24th with a variety of readings from the book.

It will be hosted online at 4 pm EST (or 3 pm CST, for those of us in Central Time, including me). You can register by visiting the Facebook page for ARCHER Coalition.

Immigrant Voices in the Pandemic can be purchased from Solis Press or from other booksellers online. Anthologized pieces include…

Third Thurday Poetry Series: Alina Stefanescu

Thursday September 21st

6:00 pm reception and book signing

6:30 pm reading

Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities

101 South Debardelelban Street in Auburn Alabama

*

Reception and book signing will take place at 6 pm, and I am so grateful to local booksellers for making a variety of my strange books available for purchase and signing. More details online at the Third Thursday Poetry Reading Series page.

In Claudia Serea’s words:

“Excited to read with Nancy Ludmerer on Friday, September 8 at 6 pm, at the esteemed FBomb series established by Paul Beckman and hosted/curated by Francine Witte. My guest readers will be the excellent poets Alina Stefanescu, Lloyd Schwartz, Anton Yakovlev, and Don Zirilli. Below is the flyer of the event.

For the Zoom link, please email our gracious host, poet Francine Witte, at wittefrancine@gmail.com, and she will send the Zoom link to everyone. Please don't share the link on social media; if anyone needs the link, they should email Francine directly.”

Music4Romania (www.music4romania.org) cordially invites you to attend “Odes and Elegies: An Evening of Music and Poetry” to be held on Wednesday, May 3, 2023, at 7:00 PM at Independent Presbyterian Church (ipc-usa.org), at 3100 Highland Ave South, Birmingham, AL 35205. The program will feature piano trio music by Enescu, Nottara, and Rachmaninoff, performed by pianist Sasha Kasman Laude and Alabama Symphony Orchestra’s musicians Daniel Szasz, violin, and Warren Samples, cello. Also featured will be poetry by Romanian-American poet Alina Stefanescu.

The concert is the second event of “Wednesdays in Romania: A Chamber Music Series with a Purpose,” designed in 2023 in partnership with several non-profit institutions in the Birmingham area with the aim of encouraging and fostering intercultural communication and understanding through the arts.

Admission is FREE but donations on site or online will gratefully be accepted to benefit Music4Romania’s mission to make a difference through music. Music4Romania is a 501(c)3 organization and donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about the “Wednesdays in Romania” series or about opportunities to become involved with Music4Romania’s community of volunteer musicians and music-lovers, please email at music4romania2023@gmail.com or contact Dr. Alina Voicu at (205)807-5814.

Join the American Romanian Cultural Society on March 12 at 2pm for an intimate reading with authors Alina Ștefănescu, Alta Ifland and Otilia Baraboi.

Author Alta Ifland will be reading from her novel Speaking to No. 4, Alina Ștefănescu will share fragments from her work in progress on Carmen Bugan's memoir, Burying the Typewriter, and Otilia Baraboi will read from her manuscript titled An Updated Theory on Untranslatability. We look forward for a special afternoon that brings these three American Romanian writers together: Alina Ștefănescu from Birmingham, Alabama, Alta Ifland from San Francisco, California and Otilia Baraboi from Seattle, Washington.

Register to attend for free. Learn more about the event from ARCs.

Wandering Aengus Press booth at the AWP book fair is #1632, right next to Empty Bowl Press.

Alina Stefanescu and Amanda Hawkins will be signing books.

A Reading
Thursday, March 9, 5:00 - 7:00 pm
Sorrento Hotel —Fireside Room
901 Madison Street
Seattle, WA

Readings from Andrew C. Gottlieb, Gail Folkins, Julie Riddle, Tina Schumann, Tarn Wilson, Amanda Hawkins, Ana Maria Spagna, Jed Myers, Jan Shoemaker, Jessica Gigot, Alina Stefanescu, Marcia Aldrich, Stephen Harvey, & Lucy Ferriss0

Join Sublunary Editions us for the virtual launch of A. V. Marraccini's WE THE PARASITES!

The author will be in conversation with none other than Alina Stefanescu on February 25 at 12:30 PM CST / 1:30 EST / 18:30 GMT (London time). Register here.

Hosted by IWWG.

A generative, 4-session workshop exploring various innovative, contemporary sonnet forms, including: double sonnets, shadow sonnets, American Sonnets, dedicated sonnets, contrapuntal modes, sonnet coronas, sonnet ballades, curtal sonnets, ekphrastic sonnets, and sonnets in translation. We will flirt with the feel of the sonnet, to paraphrase Marvin Bell, in all its raptures, laments, and furies—assuming an atmosphere of trust, respect, and confidentiality, writers will read sonnets, write sonnets, and share their work with one another, if they desire.  Sonnetmania is open to all levels. Pre-registration required.

Limited to 15 participants on a first-come, first-serve basis.

You can register online right here.

As part of ARCHER’S Virtual Symposium, Alina Stefanescu will be offering a free online writing workshop from 2:00 PM to 2:45 PM for those who have registered.

This online panel is free.

Register to join here.

6:00 - 7:30 PM CST

7:00 - 8:30 PM EST

Wednesday, February 1, 2023
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm CT

Brown Hall at Miles College
5500 Myron Massey Blvd
Fairfield, AL 35064

Please join PEN America Birmingham for the final event in the Birmingham Reads program featuring a conversation with National Book Award winner Dr. Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.

Join us for a discussion between Perry and Birmingham-based teaching artists Tania De’Shawn and Brianna Jordynn Wright. The discussion will be followed by an audience q&a.

The Birmingham Reads Project is a citywide literary event dedicated to engaging and uniting Birmingham community members in reading one book of fiction or nonfiction in one given year. This year’s selection, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (winner of the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction), by Birmingham native Imani Perry, is an ambitious accounting of the beauty, tragedy, and history of the Southern United States.

Please note: You don’t have to read South to America to enjoy this event. This event is free and open to the public.

REGISTER HERE

More online in this wonderful write-up:

The night of conversation is the final event in the 2022 edition of the Birmingham Reads Project, a citywide literary event from the Birmingham chapter of PEN America led by poet and author Alina Stefanescu and Alabama poet laureate Ashley M. Jones. Birmingham Reads is dedicated to engaging and uniting Birmingham community members in reading one book of fiction or nonfiction a year.

6:00 PM Central Standard Time / 7:00 PM Eastern Time

REGISTER TO JOIN

Welcome and introduction to The Digging Press Poetry Series and Ernesto L. Abeytia by Gessy Alvarez.

Opening remarks by host Ernesto L. Abeytia.

Readings

Millicent Borges Accardi
Emily Borgmann
Malcolm Friend
Luisa A. Igloria
Luis Lopez-Maldonado
Alina Stefanescu
Jameka Williams
JinJin Xu

Q & A.

Register here for zoom. I’ll be reading some wacky new things in fantastic company!