OUR CONTRIBUTORS
Issue 4, Volume I
Bronwyn Mills, Editor, holds an MFA from UMass, Amherst, and a Ph.D. from NYU where she was an Anais Nin
Fellow. Later a Fulbright Fellow (La République du Bénin, West Africa) she travels widely, and has lived in New York City,
Istanbul, Turkey; Latin America; and Paris, France. For many years a dance and theatre writer for regional arts publications in
New England, she is also a Senior prose editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Books include Night of the Luna Moths (poetry,) Beastly's
Tale (a fabulist novel); and she is currently working on Canary Club, a novel set in medieval Spain. Her work has appeared in
IKON, Frigate,Talisman: a Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Tupelo Quarterly, and most recently in Agni Online.
She guest-edited the Turkish issue of Absinthe; New European Writing (#19.) Bronwyn has taught at Stevens Institute of
Technology; Kadir Has University in Istanbul; and Abomey-Calavi in Bénin. From time to time she publishes work on African
vodou. Bronwyn lives and writes in a tiny mountain village far, far away.
Eric Darton, Editor, has published a number of books, including the New York Times bestseller Divided We Stand: A Biography
of The World Trade Center (Basic Books, 1999, 2011), and Free City, a novel, (WW Norton, 1996). He is also the author of an
ongoing work of free scholarship, Book of the World Courant, available at www.bookoftheworldcourant.net. Recently his essays
have been published in Tupelo Quarterly www.tupeloquarterly.com. More of his work may be found at www.ericdarton.net
and here at The Wall. Darton leads Writing at the Crossroads, a workshop for prose writers, a sampling of whose work appears
in issue 2.
Hardy Griffin has a Ph.D. from Boğaziçi University. He has published translations in the Istanbul Biennial,
Words Without Borders, and for the award-winning photographic study Armenians, which documents the lives of
Armenians living in contemporary Turkey. He has published writing in Alimentum, Assisi, The Washington Post, American
Letters & Commentary, and a chapter in Writing Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2003).
Bill Hayward. Persistently at play in fragile fields of consciousness and “circumference,” Hayward’s works have been collected
in three books: Chasing Dragons, An Uncommon Memoir in Photographs, Glitterati Inc.; Bad Behavior, Rizzoli; Bill Hayward,
Paglia Press. His films are: BENT and Asphalt, Muscle & Bone. Hayward’s Instagram: The_House_Of_Dragons_NYC
Jorden Jorden is a New York native. Contact: [email protected]
Pocket Anthology:
Carmen Firan, Romanian born, is a poet, a fiction writer and playwrite. In her native country, she has published twenty books
of poetry, novels, essays and short stories. Since 2000 she has been living in New York. Her writings appear in translation in
many literary magazines and in various anthologies in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Canada, U K, and the
USA. Her recent books and publications in the USA include: Rock and Dew (poetry, Sheep Meadow Press), The Second
Life (short stories, Columbia University Press, 2005), and The Farce (a novel, Spuyten Duyvil, 2003). Firan is a member of the
editorial board of the international magazine Lettre Internationale, member of the PEN American Center and The Poetry
Society of America. She is the co-editor of Born in Utopia; An Anthology of Romanian Contemporary Poetry (Talisman
Publishers, 2006); Naming the Nameless; An anthology of American Contemporary Poetry and Stranger at Home; and Poetry
with an Accent – An anthology of American Contemporary Poetry, Numina Press. http://www.carmenfiran.com
Nichita Stănescu (1933-1983) introduced the surreal into Romanian poetry: dalí-esque humor, physical intensity and refusal to
commit to conventional forms of poetic communication. Stănescu’s poems are like Escher’s staircases and Bach’s crab canon:
they neither start nor end, or if they end they end in paradoxical twists of language and in ironic subterfuges. (note by
translator Paul Boboc.)
George Bacovia (1881-1957) is one of the most important interwar poets; initially a symbolist, he became a precursor of
Romanian Modernism. Dark humor, intense reiterations, and prose poems distinguish him among poets of his generation and
linked his writing to the theater of the absurd. His most-praised volumes are Plumb and Autumn Nerves; Time and the self
always pass in his writing, mainly through fluid memory, patched with sadness and melancholy.
Mircea Cărtărescu is a poet, essayist and novelist, and is considered one of the most famous contemporary Romanian
authors. He left a mark during the communist dicatorship by opposing the official culture with works related to the American
"Blue Jeans Generation”. His novel Blinding received the Gregor von Rezzori Prize in 2016. A laureate of the Thomas Mann Prize
in 2018, Cărtărescu has international recognition, and his Nostalgia is published in the US by New Directions and Blinding,
which has been excerpted in this Pocket Anthology, by Archipelago Books.
Nicolae Steinhardt (1912-1989) was a prominent Jewish intellectual, author of several books, among them his Jurnalul Fericirii
(The Journal of Joy), arguably the most significant anti-Communist work in Romanian literature. After an uneventful decade as
an editor, Steinhardt was accused of harboring anti-communist feelings and sentenced to prison where he converted to
Orthodox Christianity. The Journal of Joy is a wide-ranging work, a riveting account of the forces that shaped Steinhardt’s
spiritual life amid the cataclysmic historical changes that buffeted Eastern Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. He died nine months
before the fall of Communism in Romania.
Sean Cotter, translator, is Associate Professor of Literature and Translation Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas, Center
for Translation Studies, specializing in Romanian and East European literature. He has translated many works by Romania
writers, including Liliana Ursu, Nichita Danilov, and Nichita Stănescu's Wheel with a Single Spoke (Archipelago Books, 2012),
the winner of the Three Percent Best Translated Book Award. His critical book, Literary Translation and the Idea of a Minor
Romania, studies translators and national imagination following the imposition of Communist rule by the Soviet Union after
World War Two (University of Rochester, 2014), and is the winner of the Society for Romanian Studies Biennial Book Prize.
Paul Boboc, translator, was born and raised in Baia Mare, Romania, where he finished the 1st grade. He moved to the United
States in 2001. He earned his undergraduate degree in English Literature at Boston College and his MA in English at Brandeis
University. He translated more than 1,000 pages of Romanian literature into English. His largest project, Nicolae Steinhardt’s
Jurnalul Fericrii (The Journal of Joy), a canonical text of Romanian literature, is due to be published by St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press in their upcoming ‘Treasures of Orthodox Christianity’ series. He has also translated the most representative
works of Romania’s poets (including Lucian Blaga, Tudor Arghezi, Nichita Stănescu, George Bacovia, Nicolae Labiș, George
Topârceanu, Iulia Hașdeu, and George Coșbuc).
Corneliu Baba (1906-1997), artist. A portrait painter and book illustrator, after his 1948 debut with the painting called The Chess
Player at the Art Salon in Bucharest, he was arrested and imprisoned. Later he was suspended from his teaching position
because of his “formalism”. His relationship with the communist officials was always tense, but his talent and fame
surpassed borders. In 1964 he had a solo exhibition in Brussels; in 1963 he was appointed a corresponding member of
the Romanian Academy, and in 1964 was similarly honored by the East Berlin Academy of Fine Art; in 1970 he had a solo
exhibition in New York City. He worked in the tradition of the Old Masters, citing El Greco, Rembrandt and Goya as his
influences.
Victor Brauner (1903-1966), artist. Born in Romania, he was a surrealist painter and sculptor of Jewish origin who settled in
Paris in 1930. In 1935, he returned to Bucharest and opened a new personal surrealist exhibition at the Mozart Galleries, but in
1938 he returned to Paris. One portfolio, entitled Mythology, is a surrealist view of the modern world. He was on
the run all the time, during WWII and afterwards, in exile in France and Italy. He painted "Prelude to a Civilization" in
1954, (acquired by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.) In 1966, he was chosen to represent France at the Venice
Biennale, where an entire hall was dedicated to his works.
Kelvin James, Trinidadian-American Kelvin Christopher James writes fables, short stories, and novels. Among publishers of his
work are Villard Books, a division of Random House; HarperCollins; Harvard Square Editions; and several quality magazines.
He has been awarded a NYFA in Fiction, and an NEA for Literature. He lives in Harlem, New York City.
J. Maya Luz is a New York City-based artist. She has exhibited in galleries in NYC and abroad. In 2005 “Dar a Luz/Bring to Light”,
photographs of women in the last stage of pregnancy, was selected to visually represent the Pan American Health
Organization’s concept, ”Make Every Mother and Child Count”. Her work is in private collections in the US, Mexico and UK.
Fellow. Later a Fulbright Fellow (La République du Bénin, West Africa) she travels widely, and has lived in New York City,
Istanbul, Turkey; Latin America; and Paris, France. For many years a dance and theatre writer for regional arts publications in
New England, she is also a Senior prose editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Books include Night of the Luna Moths (poetry,) Beastly's
Tale (a fabulist novel); and she is currently working on Canary Club, a novel set in medieval Spain. Her work has appeared in
IKON, Frigate,Talisman: a Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Tupelo Quarterly, and most recently in Agni Online.
She guest-edited the Turkish issue of Absinthe; New European Writing (#19.) Bronwyn has taught at Stevens Institute of
Technology; Kadir Has University in Istanbul; and Abomey-Calavi in Bénin. From time to time she publishes work on African
vodou. Bronwyn lives and writes in a tiny mountain village far, far away.
Eric Darton, Editor, has published a number of books, including the New York Times bestseller Divided We Stand: A Biography
of The World Trade Center (Basic Books, 1999, 2011), and Free City, a novel, (WW Norton, 1996). He is also the author of an
ongoing work of free scholarship, Book of the World Courant, available at www.bookoftheworldcourant.net. Recently his essays
have been published in Tupelo Quarterly www.tupeloquarterly.com. More of his work may be found at www.ericdarton.net
and here at The Wall. Darton leads Writing at the Crossroads, a workshop for prose writers, a sampling of whose work appears
in issue 2.
Hardy Griffin has a Ph.D. from Boğaziçi University. He has published translations in the Istanbul Biennial,
Words Without Borders, and for the award-winning photographic study Armenians, which documents the lives of
Armenians living in contemporary Turkey. He has published writing in Alimentum, Assisi, The Washington Post, American
Letters & Commentary, and a chapter in Writing Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2003).
Bill Hayward. Persistently at play in fragile fields of consciousness and “circumference,” Hayward’s works have been collected
in three books: Chasing Dragons, An Uncommon Memoir in Photographs, Glitterati Inc.; Bad Behavior, Rizzoli; Bill Hayward,
Paglia Press. His films are: BENT and Asphalt, Muscle & Bone. Hayward’s Instagram: The_House_Of_Dragons_NYC
Jorden Jorden is a New York native. Contact: [email protected]
Pocket Anthology:
Carmen Firan, Romanian born, is a poet, a fiction writer and playwrite. In her native country, she has published twenty books
of poetry, novels, essays and short stories. Since 2000 she has been living in New York. Her writings appear in translation in
many literary magazines and in various anthologies in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Canada, U K, and the
USA. Her recent books and publications in the USA include: Rock and Dew (poetry, Sheep Meadow Press), The Second
Life (short stories, Columbia University Press, 2005), and The Farce (a novel, Spuyten Duyvil, 2003). Firan is a member of the
editorial board of the international magazine Lettre Internationale, member of the PEN American Center and The Poetry
Society of America. She is the co-editor of Born in Utopia; An Anthology of Romanian Contemporary Poetry (Talisman
Publishers, 2006); Naming the Nameless; An anthology of American Contemporary Poetry and Stranger at Home; and Poetry
with an Accent – An anthology of American Contemporary Poetry, Numina Press. http://www.carmenfiran.com
Nichita Stănescu (1933-1983) introduced the surreal into Romanian poetry: dalí-esque humor, physical intensity and refusal to
commit to conventional forms of poetic communication. Stănescu’s poems are like Escher’s staircases and Bach’s crab canon:
they neither start nor end, or if they end they end in paradoxical twists of language and in ironic subterfuges. (note by
translator Paul Boboc.)
George Bacovia (1881-1957) is one of the most important interwar poets; initially a symbolist, he became a precursor of
Romanian Modernism. Dark humor, intense reiterations, and prose poems distinguish him among poets of his generation and
linked his writing to the theater of the absurd. His most-praised volumes are Plumb and Autumn Nerves; Time and the self
always pass in his writing, mainly through fluid memory, patched with sadness and melancholy.
Mircea Cărtărescu is a poet, essayist and novelist, and is considered one of the most famous contemporary Romanian
authors. He left a mark during the communist dicatorship by opposing the official culture with works related to the American
"Blue Jeans Generation”. His novel Blinding received the Gregor von Rezzori Prize in 2016. A laureate of the Thomas Mann Prize
in 2018, Cărtărescu has international recognition, and his Nostalgia is published in the US by New Directions and Blinding,
which has been excerpted in this Pocket Anthology, by Archipelago Books.
Nicolae Steinhardt (1912-1989) was a prominent Jewish intellectual, author of several books, among them his Jurnalul Fericirii
(The Journal of Joy), arguably the most significant anti-Communist work in Romanian literature. After an uneventful decade as
an editor, Steinhardt was accused of harboring anti-communist feelings and sentenced to prison where he converted to
Orthodox Christianity. The Journal of Joy is a wide-ranging work, a riveting account of the forces that shaped Steinhardt’s
spiritual life amid the cataclysmic historical changes that buffeted Eastern Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. He died nine months
before the fall of Communism in Romania.
Sean Cotter, translator, is Associate Professor of Literature and Translation Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas, Center
for Translation Studies, specializing in Romanian and East European literature. He has translated many works by Romania
writers, including Liliana Ursu, Nichita Danilov, and Nichita Stănescu's Wheel with a Single Spoke (Archipelago Books, 2012),
the winner of the Three Percent Best Translated Book Award. His critical book, Literary Translation and the Idea of a Minor
Romania, studies translators and national imagination following the imposition of Communist rule by the Soviet Union after
World War Two (University of Rochester, 2014), and is the winner of the Society for Romanian Studies Biennial Book Prize.
Paul Boboc, translator, was born and raised in Baia Mare, Romania, where he finished the 1st grade. He moved to the United
States in 2001. He earned his undergraduate degree in English Literature at Boston College and his MA in English at Brandeis
University. He translated more than 1,000 pages of Romanian literature into English. His largest project, Nicolae Steinhardt’s
Jurnalul Fericrii (The Journal of Joy), a canonical text of Romanian literature, is due to be published by St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press in their upcoming ‘Treasures of Orthodox Christianity’ series. He has also translated the most representative
works of Romania’s poets (including Lucian Blaga, Tudor Arghezi, Nichita Stănescu, George Bacovia, Nicolae Labiș, George
Topârceanu, Iulia Hașdeu, and George Coșbuc).
Corneliu Baba (1906-1997), artist. A portrait painter and book illustrator, after his 1948 debut with the painting called The Chess
Player at the Art Salon in Bucharest, he was arrested and imprisoned. Later he was suspended from his teaching position
because of his “formalism”. His relationship with the communist officials was always tense, but his talent and fame
surpassed borders. In 1964 he had a solo exhibition in Brussels; in 1963 he was appointed a corresponding member of
the Romanian Academy, and in 1964 was similarly honored by the East Berlin Academy of Fine Art; in 1970 he had a solo
exhibition in New York City. He worked in the tradition of the Old Masters, citing El Greco, Rembrandt and Goya as his
influences.
Victor Brauner (1903-1966), artist. Born in Romania, he was a surrealist painter and sculptor of Jewish origin who settled in
Paris in 1930. In 1935, he returned to Bucharest and opened a new personal surrealist exhibition at the Mozart Galleries, but in
1938 he returned to Paris. One portfolio, entitled Mythology, is a surrealist view of the modern world. He was on
the run all the time, during WWII and afterwards, in exile in France and Italy. He painted "Prelude to a Civilization" in
1954, (acquired by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.) In 1966, he was chosen to represent France at the Venice
Biennale, where an entire hall was dedicated to his works.
Kelvin James, Trinidadian-American Kelvin Christopher James writes fables, short stories, and novels. Among publishers of his
work are Villard Books, a division of Random House; HarperCollins; Harvard Square Editions; and several quality magazines.
He has been awarded a NYFA in Fiction, and an NEA for Literature. He lives in Harlem, New York City.
J. Maya Luz is a New York City-based artist. She has exhibited in galleries in NYC and abroad. In 2005 “Dar a Luz/Bring to Light”,
photographs of women in the last stage of pregnancy, was selected to visually represent the Pan American Health
Organization’s concept, ”Make Every Mother and Child Count”. Her work is in private collections in the US, Mexico and UK.