"Even sunlight in a scrapyard is tainted by the industry of what we want from it; or the way in which fantasies create expectations."
- Interview with Noble Gas Quarterly
podcasts + audio readings
“AN ERMINE IN CZERNOPOL WITH ALINA STEFANESCU”
Unburied Books Podcast, January 2022
On Philip Boehm’s translation of Gregor von Rezzori’s fascinating novel about the city of his birth—and the land of his imagination.
“PLAYING POSSUM”: A LOOK ACROSS DRAFTS
1- Week Critique Interview Series with Jon Riccio, 2022
About how a poem evolved from having an epigraph for Bayard Rustin to lacking this epigraph, and what Rustin means to the poet as well as the person.
ON BOOKS, POETRY, AND MUSIC
Dante’s Old South Radio Show, December 2021
In conversation with Clifford Brooks for NPR Nashville.
“IF THEY EVER FIND THEMSELVES STRAPPED TO THE MAST”
A Child Walks in the Dark Podcast, Nov. 2021
On this episode, "if they ever find themselves strapped to the mast", Darren Demaree and Alina Stefanescu discuss the idea of children, their lineage and authorship of their own lives, as related to Darren’s poem "if they ever find themselves strapped to the mast" from the a child walks in the dark collection.
“OF LONGING, TELEOLOGY, AND LABOR”
Of Longing Poetry Podcast, November 2021
A beautiful sliver of light with Han Vanderhart discussing poetry collections, longing, and what it means to write.
“COVER TO COVER WITH ALINA STEFANESCU”
The Bookends Review Podcast, July 2019
So grateful to Jordan Blum for this wacky conversation about everything under the sun including, briefly, loosely, Every Mask I Tried On.
"DREAMING IN UTERO"
Mr. Bear's Violet Hour Saloon (Jan. 9, 2018)
In which Mr. Bear reads from Alina Stefanescu's equally bewitching and unsettling book "stories to read aloud to your fetus" from Finishing Line Press. A piercing fusion of ancient magic and modern bodies, love and pain, certainties and the unknown, these half-poem, half-fairy tale seedlings birth a new mythology to swim through your blood, passing secrets through your veins.
PRESENT TENSE PODCAST (2018)
"My first encounter with poetry was in the Romanian language... In America we really have the ability to write as intense a poem as we want and I am grateful for that and I participate in it."
"THE COLOR OF MISSING"
Mr. Bear's Violet Hour Saloon (#104, July 26, 2016)
In which Mr. Bear reads the shimmering work of Alina Stefanescu, where sunsets and birds and stamps and mothers-in-law and boats are tied together with threads of light, color, missing, desire, searching, secrets almost translated. These stories are like looking at your heart through a kaleidoscope — prepare to be dazzled.
“I'm that wacky woman you see who keeps whipping out a notebook to scribble as her kids choreograph rain dances in public parks.”
“But appeasement is an exercise in bad faith...”
"As a human, you learn from the sore places. As a writer, the scars are a seam through which poetry emerges. So love is paramount— love is the penultimate precipice."
interviews and conversations
INTERVIEW WITH TOBIAS RYAN, MINOR LIT, 2022
“He uses the dream as a weapon of resistance; he sanctifies memory as a means to justice”: A Conversation about Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘In the Presence of Absence’ with Alina Ştefănescu.
BEN LIBMAN TALKS TO ALINA STEFANESCU, THE UNAMEABLE, 2002
”I’m attracted to impurity. And I would say that purity is my enemy—in life, in constructions of identity, and in language. Romania is not pure to me, and the history there is haunting. There are so many stories that need to be told; the silences in Romania on the Shoah and the Roma are deafening. I mean, many of Romania’s greatest writers were Jewish. And my dialogue with Romania includes writers like Mihail Sebastian, who changed my life. When the fascists rose to power, what Sebastian said to them was, “You want to take away my rights? My family has been here longer than yours. So who are you to tell me I’m not Romanian?” Those questions are ongoing; they linger still.”
FEVERS OF THE MIND INTERVIEW, 2022
”I get restless with chit-chat, but I also get deeply invested in conversations with strangers or acquaintances, any human willing to meet me in the marrow of books, suffering, life, failure, terror, sex, chocolate. I crave intensity from conversation – it’s my adrenaline.”
IN CONVERSATION WITH DACIANA BRANEA, 2021
„Patria mea e în mintea mea”
ALINA IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHELLE LAVIGNE
“In American , my primary, everyday language, something stays missing — there is a perpetual desperation to be placed, whereas, speaking Romanian, hearing Romanian (my first language, or the language that birthed and raised me) feels complete. . . Romanian is a context, while American is constantly seeking its context, or creating it, tying little boot-straps to language, inventing families and community from corporate discourse, trying to make itself complete.”
LUCY WRITERS DINNER PARTY RELOADED, 2021
”For me, poems often emerge as a sense of overflow, a trespass between the boundary of known and unknown, or unknowable.”
“POETS REFLECT ON SIX MONTHS OF PANDEMIC”
by Andrew Yeager (WBHM, September 11, 2020)
On aubades and caged animals.
NAZLI KARABIYIKOGLU TALKS TO ALINA STEFANESCU
Trampset, 2020
”I’m just not sure there is anything worth defending in the powers that be. The problem is I want you to like me. The truth remains unlikable, messy, unclean, dirty, complicated, riven by American notions of success. The machine of markets and product placement grinds us down into pulp, then spits us into the landfill. The poet makes portraits from the detritus. I am still aching to get my mind blown by pigeons who aren’t selling status in park plaza or else the wonder of wind making a nest for dead leaves on my face.”
CLIFFORD BROOKS TALKS TO ALINA STEFANESCU
Blue Mountain Review, Issue 18, Spring 2020, pp. 112-115
”This idea that poetry is a hobby or dalliance could only exist in a culture so deeply capitalist that value is ascribed entirely to the ability to make money. And poets make nothing. Poets struggle to survive and to keep writing and to make space in their lives for creation…We are asked not to just to be vulnerable in the writing itself—to expose and put our most intimate worries under a microscrope—but then we are asked to sell it, to defend it, to monetize it, to be sucked dry by the emotional demands of marketing while trying to protect our families or loved ones.”
ALINA STEFANESCU IN CONVERSATION WITH TOM SIMPSON
American Microreviews and Interviews, Issue 50, Fall 2019
”I'm still in love with this terrible world. As for falling in love with writing, that sounds too much like a choice. I'm not sure there's a word for beginning a story you can't resist.”
IN CONVERSATION WITH ROB MCLENNAN
"I am fascinated by socialization, behavioral economics, epistemology, neuroscience, cultural conventions,
religious fundamentalism, and bounded rationality. I cannot muster a solid line between the intimate and the political."
ON EVER MASK I TRIED ON
Former Cactus, 2018
”We do wear masks to be seen, but I also think in the US we often wear masks to be overlooked, to disappear in a sea of familiar hat-wearing heads, to be accepted, to feel safe. There is something so tenuous about existence—and how I learned to be human in the borderlands between native tongue and American flag, how complex and fragile these multiple identities.”
THE “WE SHALL OVERCOME” SERIES
Les Femmes Folles, July 2017
On reproductive labor and flesh.
THE PIDGEONHOLES INTERVIEW
November 2016
”I love the fellowship of writers— the shared hyper-sensitivity, the loneliness of those who remain outside in order to tell a story about what they’ve seen. If I have a muse, s/he is a creature of many faces, a trickster, a doppelgänger, a man I happen to love, a patriot that isn’t a missile.”
OBJECTS IN VASES: Q&A WITH ALINA STEFANESCU
Speaking of Marvels, September 2016
”In American culture, gender socialization begins early, urged on by the desire to establish common ground among peers. To “make friends.” Girls are given make-up and Barbie dreams while boys are given machines and guns. It struck me that so many voices are marginalized by this “natural” welcome into the world of weapons. Though we like to pretend we are a nation of nonconformists, I think watching our children tells a different story. Herd mentalities cover everything from fashion and fitness (think about the latest trending diet/exercise craze) to sports. The lines for which we stand give you a gun. Then dare you to use it.”
#FEATURE FRIDAY: ALINA STEFANESCU
Ink In Thirds, May 2016
FAITH SUNDQUIST SPEAKS TO ALINA STEFANESCU
Anchor & Plume Press, January 2016
SURVEY TIME QUARTERLY Q & A
"It’s a gruesome thing– not the writing, but publishing. You already feel naked (you laid it out on paper) and then you have to pretend you know what you’re talking about to convince people to look at you naked. The contortions are indirectly related to cricks in the neck. Today, I am poultry. But then I write."