The festival is the brainchild of the Romanian Cultural Institute in London, under Festival Director Magda Stroe. It is co-curated by the literary dream team of Rosie Goldsmith, the festival’s Artistic Director, and Gabriela Mocan, the festival’s Creative Producer. Publicity and Publishing Consultant: Emma House; Literary Co-ordinator, Brochure & Website: Anna Blasiak; Translation & Editorial Assistant: Andreea Scridon; Logo: Cristian Luchian. All events are free, filmed by Mihai Andrei of London Video Stories and will be available subsequently on Facebook, YouTube and the RCI London & European Literature Network websites.
If you want to know more about our team, read on
Magda Stroe is currently the Acting Director of the the Romanian Cultural Institute in London, where she has been working since 2006. With a Computer Science degree and experience in cultural promotion and online communication, Magda worked on the development and implementation of large cultural projects such as “The Transylvania Festival”, “The Romanian Retrospective” at the British Film Institute and the cultural programmes celebrating the “Romanian Centenary” in 2018, “Romania’s Presidency of the EU Council” and “30 Years from the Romanian Revolution”, in 2019. Between 2002-2006 she worked as Web & E-services Officer for the British Council Romania, she served as Deputy Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in London between 2008-2016 and was part of EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) London’s Presidential team (2018-2019).
Rosie Goldsmith is a former BBC journalist, writer, presenter and director of the European Literature Network. Rosie Goldsmith is an award-winning journalist specializing in arts and foreign affairs. In twenty years at the BBC she travelled the world and presented several flagship programmes. Rosie is a linguist and has lived in Europe, Africa and the USA. Today she combines journalism with chairing and curating literary events and festivals for leading cultural organisations. Known as a champion of international literature, translation and language learning, she promotes them whenever she can. She is Founder and Director of the European Literature Network www.eurolitnetwork.com and created The Riveter magazine. From 2018-2020 she was Chair of the Judges of the EBRD Literature Prize, honouring authors and translators equally.
Gabriela Mocan is a cultural entrepreneur and creative producer, whose proven track record in the world of arts & culture includes award-winning exhibitions (e.g. London Fashion Week) and numerous other successful projects, most of which developed in the UK and Romania. Between 2013 and 2019, she was Head of Literature, Visual Arts, Architecture and Design at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London, where she also led the organisation’s PR & Communications. Gabriela holds a doctoral degree in Cultural Studies/Philology from the “Babeş-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca, where she is currently lecturing in English for Business and Intercultural Communication, while furthering her work as a translator and editor. As guest editor of The Romanian Riveter magazine, her contribution was significant towards the first issue of a British literary magazine dedicated entirely to Romania. Gabriela is the Creative Producer and Co-Curator of the groundbreaking Romania Rocks Festival, the first Romanian-British literature festival ever organised in the UK.
Emma House is an international publishing consultant. She has worked in the publishing sector for over 20 years holding senior positions at the London Book Fair and at the Publishers Association UK, where she was most recently Deputy CEO. Emma’s consultancy covers event and project management, research and report writing, and international business development. Emma is a board member of PublisHer and a trustee of the Publishing Training Centre. She is a regular speaker at international books fairs and conferences and regularly writes for the international trade press.
Anna Blasiak is a poet, translator, journalist and literature co-ordinator of the European Literature Network. She has translated over 40 books from English into Polish and some fiction from Polish into English. She has also translated poetry between Polish and English. In addition to her book-length translations, her work has been published in Best European Fiction 2015, Asymptote, The Guardian, B O D Y Literature, York Literary Review, Anomaly and Modern Poetry in Translation. Anna’s bilingual poetry book Kawiarnia przy St James’s Wrena w porze lunchu / Café by Wren’s St-James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime is out now from Holland House Books. Lili. Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation with Anna Blasiak is out in November 2020. More: annablasiak.com.
Andreea Iulia Scridon is a Romanian-American writer and translator. Born in Romania, 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 St. Anne’s College at the University of Oxford. She is assistant editor at Asymptote Journal, fiction editor at the Oxford Review of Books, contributing editor at E Ratio Poetry, and an occasional assessor for English PEN’s PEN Translates programme. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in World Literature Today, Oxford Poetry, Asymptote Journal, Wild Court, Harana Poetry, The Blue Nib, and elsewhere.Her translation of a series of short stories by writer and political dissident I.D. Sîrbu are forthcoming in 2020 with ABPress, and her co-translations, with Adam J. Sorkin, of Romanian poet Traian T. Coşovei are forthcoming in 2021 with Broken Sleep Books. As a hybrid of two cultures, she has written a novel set in 18th century Romania and a book of poems inspired by George Enescu’s compositions.
Mihai Andrei is a Romanian filmmaker, entrepreneur and video producer who resides in London, UK. He specialised in video production while studying at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, Romania. After working for several film festivals and theatres in Europe, he established Andem Motion Films a documentary studio that produced promotional films for city halls, back in Romania. In 2012, Mihai moved to London where he set up a new video production company, London Video Stories. He directed and produced videos that focus on cultural content (Goethe Institut, The Romanian Cultural Institute, The European Commission); literature (V&A, The European Literature Network: Fashion and Fiction series with Rosie Goldsmith); dance (Reverie Habituelle and Tournee Cadenza with Cinemadicction); classical music (documentary films with Fugue State Films) and created a wide range of masterclasses for global multinational companies.