Women writers dominate the literature written by Romanians in North America. Our literary series, turning the spotlight on this phenomenal wave of creativity, organized in partnership with Denver-based Bucharest Inside the Beltway, brings together the largest group of Romanian-American and Romanian-Canadian women writers we have ever assembled in cyberspace. The program, co-curated with author and academic Cristina A. Bejan, offers a series of readings full of passion, truth and skill to match a time of tumult and reinvention.
The 8th and last episode of the series' first season features playwright Amanda L. Andrei and poet and translator Andreea Scridon.
With roots in the Philippines and Romania, AMANDA L. ANDREI hails from Virginia/Washington D.C. and currently resides in Los Angeles. Her plays are epic, irreverent, and medicinal. Full-length plays include Lena Passes By (Quarterfinalist 2020 Screencraft Stage Play Competition), Black Sky (Winner of Parity Productions 2020 Commission; Madison New Works Lab; Semifinalist 2019 Screencraft Stage Play Competition; Finalist 2020 New American Voices Festival), and Every Night I Die (Winner 2010 International Bottle Tree Award). Her work has been developed by Pasadena Playhouse, Playwrights Arena, La MaMa, Artists at Play, Son of Semele, In Full Color, Relative Theatrics, Bucharest Inside the Beltway, La-Ti-Do, and others. She is a member of the Echo Young Playwrights group, The Vagrancy Writers Group, Playground LA’s Writers Pool, and Dramatists Guild of America. She is a proud alum of VONA, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and was recently named a Sylvia Clare Brown fellow at Ragdale. She is a teaching artist with Fringe Benefits and producer at Aguas Arts Ink. College of William & Mary (BA), Georgetown University (MA), University of Southern California (MFA).
ANDREEA IULIA SCRIDON is a poet and translator. She immigrated with her parents to the United States as a child and grew up in Florida. She studied Comparative Literature at King’s College London and Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Andreea is commissioning editor at E-Ratio Poetry Journal, fiction editor at the Oxford Review of Books, and assistant editor at Asymptote Journal and her work has been published or is forthcoming in World Literature Today, Oxford Poetry, Asymptote Journal, Wild Court, and Harana Poetry, among other journals. Her translation of a series of short stories by Ion D. Sîrbu, a representative of subversive writing under the communist regime, termed “Romania’s Bulgakov”, is forthcoming in 2021 with ABPress, and her co-translations, with Adam J. Sorkin, of the Romanian poet Traian T. Coșovei are forthcoming in 2021 with Broken Sleep Books.
Watch the previous episodes here:
Ep. 3 / Carmen Bugan and Alina Cumpan
Ep. 4 / Diana Manole and Claudia Serea
Ep. 5 / Clara Burghelea and Roxana Cazan
The program is organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York and Bucharest Inside the Beltway with the support of NARPA - North American Romanian Press Association.