Dialogue of the Wind and Sea

Poetesse extraordinaire, masterful translator of Shakespeare, Molière and Bertolt Brecht, utopia lover, famous for declaring that her "motherland has always been the Romanian Language", Nina Cassian (1924-2014) spent the last 30 years of her life in an, at the beginning, unwilling American exile which she soon assumed. She ended up conquering the English-speaking audiences and cultural milieus with her charisma and talent. Join us in celebrating this dazzling personality, one of the most important authors in the history of Romanian literature, at 100 years since her birth in Galați, Romania and ten years since her death in New York!

The event features the screening of Mona Nicoară and Dana Bunescu’s film, "The Distance Between Me and Me" followed by a conversation between Carmen Firan, celebrated author of "Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea, Nina Cassian in Conversation with Carmen Firan" and Alice Năstase-Buciuta, author of "Nina Cassian - A Thousand Poems" and the editor of the revised version of Nina Cassian's journal, „Memoria ca zestre” / "Memory as a Dowery" (2010).

Romanian-American author Carmen Firan published twenty-eight books in her native country and in the United States. Since 2000 she has been living in New York. Among her recent books and publications are "Where The Sky Begins" (2024), "The Lost Shadow" (2023, New Meridian Arts), "Changing Your Sign, Changing Your Destiny – An Immigrant’s Horoscope" (New Meridian Arts, 2019), "Interviews and Encounters" (Poems and Dialogue with Nina Cassian, Sheep Meadow Press, 2016), "Rock and Dew" (poems, Sheep Meadow Press, 2013), "Words and Flesh", (essays, Talisman Publishers, 2008), "In the Most Beautiful Life" (Poems with Photographs by Virginia Joffe, Umbrage Editions, 2002), and three other collections of poetry: "Afternoon With An Angel", "The First Moment After Death", and "Accomplished Error. She edited Born in Utopia: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Romanian Poetry" (Talisman House), and co-edited the anthology "Stranger at Home. Contemporary American Poetry with an Accent" (Numina Press, Los Angeles). Her work has been translated in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Poland. Firan is a PEN American Center and the Poetry Society of America member and serves on the international magazine Interpoezia (New York) editorial board. The Romanian Academy published her collection "One Hundred and One Poems" (with a Preface by Andrei Codrescu, 2020).

Alice Năstase Buciuta (licensed in Philology and Psycho-Sociology, having an MBA in Communication and a PhD in Political Science) is a Romanian journalist, editor, writer and independent researcher in literary and cultural studies. She is the founder of Tango Books Publishing House, the publisher to which Nina Cassian entrusted the re-editing of her journal, "Memory as a Dowry" (revised edition, 2010). Alice Năstase Buciuta is the editor of the poetry anthology Nina Cassian - One Thousand Poems (Tango Books Publishing House, 2020) and the author of many studies dedicated to Nina Cassian, such as "Forms of Exile in the Poetic Work of Nina Cassian - Between a Pregnant Yesterday and an Aborted Tomorrow" (2020), "Nina Cassian's Writings – Milestones from a First-Person Poetic Archeology" (2021), "Dictatorship as a Plague in Nina Cassian's Poetry", (2021). She also facilitated the last important meetings Nina Cassian had with the Romanian public in Bucharest. As an Associate Lecturer, she taught Feminine Journalism at The Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies at the University of Bucharest, and Contemporary and Postmodern Romanian Literature at The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures "Dimitrie Cantemir" University, Bucharest, Romania.