Welcome to The Romanian Riveter. With this edition of our magazine of European writing, we focus not just on a country’s literature, but on the writing from a specific city and region: Timișoara and Timiș County. As you can see from the architecture that adorns our cover and illustrates this volume, Timișoara is a very special place. Located in the far west of Romania, close to the borders with Serbia and Hungary, it sits on a crossroads of both culture and history. This has made it particularly fertile ground for writing, as you will see from the diversity of form, language and style presented in this magazine. In fact some of Romania’s greatest contemporary authors hail from this region. Our magazine also presents some of the literature from the rest of the country.
This edition of The Riveter is a collaboration between the European Literature Network and Tudor Crețu, manager of ‘Sorin Titel’ Timiș County Library, director of LitVest, one of Timișoara’s two literary festivals, and an esteemed poet, novelist and literary critic. Our thanks go to him for curating a fascinating and eye-opening selection of writing from his city, and to Timiș County Council for making this magazine possible, the first ever magazine of contemporary Romanian literature in English. We’re launching it with some special events this September in both Timișoara at LitVest and London at the Romanian Cultural Institute. Details on our website!
With Covid-19 making travel to Romania difficult, we hope that this edition of our magazine will offer you the next best thing: a tour of the literature of Timișoara, the Banat region and wider Romania. Enjoy your trip!
Editors
Rosie Goldsmith and West Camel
Read The Romanian Riveter in its entirety here.