Z9FESTIVAL
Z9FESTIVAL



GUESTS BY YEAR
PROGRAM 2022
July 8 2022 | 8 pm | Teatrul GONG
Readings by:
Cristina Stancu [Romania]
Audun Mortensen [Norway]
Valeriu A. Cuc [Romania]
Dóra Mărcuțiu-Rácz [Hungary/Romania]
Miruna Vlada [Romania]
Ángelo Néstore [Italy/Spain]
Elena Boldor [Romania]
Ion Buzu [Republic of Moldova]
July 9 2022 | 11:30 am | Faust Cafe und Disko
Z9Camp Readings:
Irina Balcu, lulia Gândilă, Robert Fazakas, Paula Haneș, Diana Huțanu, lulia laroslavschi, Crina Neacșu, Rebeca Maria Oanță, loana Pătulea, lulia Pietraru, Șerban Mark Pop, Dan-Bogdan Popescu, Denis Prodea, Alexandrina Savin, Bogdan Vișan
July 9 2022 | 8 pm | Teatrul GONG
Readings by:
Adelina Pascale [Romania]
Ondřej Macl [Czech Republic]
Andrada Yunusoglu [Romania]
Stephanie Sy-Quia [UK/USA]
Flavia Dima [Romania]
Maarten van der Graaff [Netherlands]
Florentin Popa [Romania]
Z9 Awards Ceremony
2022
Elena Boldor
Elena Boldor was born on the internet but she currently lives in Cluj-Napoca. She’s an intern within the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and her main research interests focus on empirical aesthetics and cognitive and computational science. She published her first poetry book traxx in 2021. She is inspired by the ‘90s rave culture, cinematography, magick, industrial and power electronics.
Ion Buzu
Ion Buzu (b. 1990, Republic of Moldova) graduated in 2013 from the Faculty of Marketing and Logistics at the Academy of Economics Studies in Moldova and has a Master’s degree in Contemporary Philosophies. He published two poetry books. In 2014, together with two other poets and a visual artist, he founded the literary basa magazine Lolita. He is part of the Best European Fiction of 2016 anthology (Dalkey Archive Press) with a short story.
Valeriu A. Cuc
Valeriu A. Cuc (b. 1991, Oradea) has published poems in a variety of literary magazines (Vatra, Familia, Steaua, Echinox, Dlite) and has had readings during festivals, literary events, and literary circles in Romania. He is currently living in Bucharest, where he goes back and forth between his job as an IT engineer, music, and, from time to time, film photography. He made his debut in poetry with Poeme at OMG Publishing.
Flavia Dima
Flavia Dima (b. 1993, Brașov) is a graduate of Journalism (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca) and Visual Studies (University of Bucharest, Bucharest). She works as a film critic, cinema curator, and translator. Her texts have been published in local magazines (FILM MENU, Films in Frame, Echinox, Vice, Acoperișul de Sticlă) as well as international outlets (MUBI Notebook, Kinoscope). Her areas of interest are the representation of memory and the conjunction between micro- and macro-history, intersectional feminism, and critical perspectives on contemporary society.
Maarten van der Graaff
Maarten van der Graaff (b. 1987) is a Dutch writer. He published Vluchtautogedichten in 2013. A year later, this book was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize for best debut poetry collection. Dood werk, his second collection, was published in 2015. Van der Graaff is an editor and co-founder of Samplekanon, an online literary magazine. In 2017, Wormen en engelen, his first novel, was published to great acclaim. Nederland in stukken (The Netherlands in pieces), a collection of poems, was published in 2020. Onder asfalt (Under asphalt), his second novel, in which all the highways in the Netherlands disappear on a summer night in 1999, was published this spring.
Ondřej Macl
Ondřej Macl (b. 1989) is a Czech writer, performer, and social worker based in Prague. He published an award-winning experimental book I Love My Grandma More Than Young Women (2017), a poetry collection, What You Were Born For (2018), a novel, The Fireworks Expedition (2019), and a political satire, The Legend of Bocian (2021). His artistic research is focused on the erotic love tradition and the Bohemian Seacoast.
Dóra Mărcuțiu-Rácz
Dóra Mărcuțiu-Rácz is a writer, poet, and editor born in 1996. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Hungarian and English Literature Studies and Linguistics at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. She is currently an editor of the literary journal Helikon, she translates from Romanian and English and has published a collection of poems under the title Már minden nő hazament (2020).
Audun Mortensen
Audun Mortensen (b. 1985, Daejeon, South Korea) lives and works in Askim, Norway. Mortensen is the author of twelve books of poetry and fiction, published by Flamme Forlag, an imprint of Norway’s largest publishing house, Cappelen Damm. His conceptual work, The Collected Jokes of Slavoj Žižek, initially published in a limited edition in 2011, has been sold to 15 countries. Norwegian lifestyle magazine D2 has labelled Mortensen as “Norway’s most modern author”, while Norwegian best-selling fiction writer Erlend Loe called him “refreshing, unorthodox, dauntless and funny”. Mortensen has contributed to exhibitions such as Art of the Joke at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, Ed Ruscha: Books & Co at Gagosian Gallery in New York City, Korrespondance at Galleri Image in Århus, and Off the Wall at Kösk Gallery in Oslo.
Ángelo Néstore
Ángelo Néstore (b. 1986, Lecce) is a non-binary queer poet and performer. They were born in Italy and now live in their adopted city of Malaga. They also are a professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Malaga. They successfully defended their PhD thesis on Comics Translation and Queer Theory. They are the director of the poetry publisher Letraversal and co-direct the Irreconciliables International Poetry Festival. Their first poetry collection was Adán o nada (Bandaàparte Editores). Lawrence Schimel’s translation of their second poetry collection, Impure Acts (Indolent Books), was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award; in the original language, Spanish, this collection won the 32nd Hiperión Poetry Award. Their third collection, Hágase mi voluntad (Pre-textos) won the 20th Emilio Prados Award. In addition to his work as a poet, they are the Spanish translator of the Ted Hughes award-winning Nobody Told Me by Hollie McNish. As a singer, they have released two songs based on their poems.
Adelina Pascale
Adelina Pascale (b. 1995, Tulcea) graduated from the University of Bucharest (Faculty of Letters, Romanian-German) and a master’s degree from CESI (with a film theory-based thesis). She likes analogue photography, tuxedo cats, and noodle soups.
Florentin Popa
Florentin Popa (b. 1989, Băicoi, Prahova) has published three poetry books, as well as a couple of translations. He lives in Florești (Cluj), in a place where one can still hear the sound of crickets. He wants to finish an ambient album, relying on the crickets to do the heavy lifting. He is the founder of the Mafia Sonetelor cultural/communal (micro-)platform, where you may find him chipping away at poems or chattering in his podcasts. He pleads for his right to be forgotten.
Cristina Stancu
Cristina Stancu (b. 1990) is a Romanian poet and amateur photographer. In 2017, she made her first poetry book, Teritorii (Tracus Arte), which received the Mihai Eminescu National Poetry Prize as well as the Iustin Panța Prize; poems from the book were translated into Greek and Slovakian. In 2021, she published her second poetry book apără pe cineva de tine (Casa de Pariuri Literare), and fragments from the book were translated into English. Her photography and collages were published, in 2021 and 2022, by After Happy Hour Review, Evocations Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly.
Stephanie Sy-Quia
Stephanie Sy-Quia (b. 1995) is a writer, critic, and printmaker currently based in the South of France. Her debut, Amnion (2021), is published by Granta Poetry. It was a Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation, has been longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize, and is the recipient of both a Somerset Maugham and an Eric Gregory Award. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times, The Guardian, Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, Boston Review, and White Review, among others.
Miruna Vlada
Miruna Vlada is a writer and researcher in European studies, based in Bucharest. She published 4 collections of poetry: Poemextrauterine (2004), Pauza dintre vene (2007), Bosnia. Partaj (2014) and Prematur (2021). Selections from her poems have been included in several anthologies of best young Romanian poets and translated into 12 languages. She is a member of the steering committee of the PEN Club Romania organization. In 2022, the second edition of Bosnia. Partition was published by Casa de Pariuri Literare. She studied political science in Bucharest, Graz, Ljubljana, and Berlin. In 2013, she obtained a PhD in international relations at SNSPA in Bucharest, where she is now teaching and conducting research. In 2016, she received the “Traduki Literary Residency” scholarship in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). She is currently working on her first novel Anticoncepțional.
Andrada Yunusoglu
Andrada Yunusoglu (b. 1996) is a Romanian poet and a PhD candidate in philology, and the author of kısmet: oasele noastre se vor descompune atât de frumos (Casa de Pariuri Literare, 2021).
2021
Photos by Ruxandra Gîdei

Kaveh Akbar

Răzvan Andrei

Emily Berry

Max Czollek

Gabi Eftimie

Teona Galgoțiu
Andrei Gamarț

Berta García Faet

Ileana Negrea

Radu Nițescu

Mădălina Oprea

Deniz Otay

Alexandra Pâzgu

Tudor Pop

Florentin Popa
Ariana Reines

Stacey Teague
Kinga Tóth
2020
COVID-19 break 🙁
2019
Portraits by Gabriela Cuzepan

Jesica Baciu
Eta Dahlia

Andrei Doboș

Robert G. Elekes

Livia Franchini

Ioana Iacob
Jakobe Mansztajn

Richard Scott

Xiao Yue Shan

Arno van Vlierberghe
Ioana Vintilă

Elena Vlădăreanu

Nadia de Vries

Charlotte Warsen
2018
Portraits by Gabriela Cuzepan

Denise Bonetti

Gabriela Feceoru

Kristofer Folkhammar

Mircea Andrei Florea

Linn Hansén

Oli Hazzard

Heir of the Cursed

Stéphane Korvin

Cosmina Moroșan

Ruxandra Novac

Galina Rymbu

Livia Ștefan

Raed Wahesh
2017
Portraits by Gabriela Cuzepan

Anna Axfors

Crispin Best

Yevgeniy Breyger

Teona Galgoțiu

Gaia Ginevra Giorgi
Benji Horváth

Kali Ágnes

Elena Medel

Florentin Popa

Uroš Prah
Kinga Tóth

Sînziana Șipoș

Alex Văsieș

JL Williams
2016

Mihnea Bâlici

Sophie Collins

Ana Donțu

Radu Nițescu

Ovio Olaru

Marko Pogačar

Arturo Sánchez

Krista Szöcs

Petra Szőcs
Andrei C. Șerban

Ioan Șerbu

Gašper Torkar

Victor Țvetov
2015
Portraits by Cornel Moșneag

Ștefan Baghiu

Alex Cosmescu

Oscar Bruno d'Artois

Andrei Dósa

Vlad Drăgoi

Vlad A. Gheorghiu

Lieke Marsman

Luna Miguel

Radu Nițescu

Deniz Otay

Katja Perat

Sam Riviere

Lucy K. Shaw

Diogo Vaz Pinto

Alex Văsieș
GUESTS BY COUNTRY
Belgium
- Arno Van Vlierberghe
China
- Xiao Yue Shan
Croatia
- Marko Pogačar
France
- Stéphane Korvin
Germany
- Yevgeniy Breyger
- Max Czollek
- Raed Wahesh
- Charlotte Warsen
Hungary
- Benji Horváth
- Kali Ágnes
- Petra Szőcs
- Kinga Tóth
Iran
- Kaveh Akbar
Italy
- Gaia Ginevra Giorgi
Kenya
- Heir of the Cursed
The Netherlands
- Lieke Marsman
- Nadia de Vries
New Zealand
- Stacey Teague
Palestine
- Raed Wahesh
Portugal
- Diogo Vaz Pinto
Poland
- Jakobe Mansztajn
Republic of Moldova
- Alex Cosmescu
- Andrei Gamarț
- Victor Țvetov
Romania
- Răzvan Andrei
- Jesica Baciu
- Ștefan Baghiu
- Mihnea Bâlici
- Andrei Doboș
- Andrei Dósa
- Vlad Drăgoi
- Gabi Eftimie
- Robert G. Elekes
- Gabriela Feceoru
- Mircea Andrei Florea
- Teona Galgoțiu
- Vlad A. Gheorghiu
- Benji Horváth
- Ioana Iacob
- Kali Ágnes
- Cosmina Moroșan
- Ileana Negrea
- Radu Nițescu
- Ruxandra Novac
- Ovio Olaru
- Deniz Otay
- Mădălina Oprea
- Alexandra Pâzgu
- Tudor Pop
- Florentin Popa
- Krista Szöcs
- Andrei C. Șerban
- Ioan Șerbu
- Sînziana Șipoș
- Livia Ștefan
- Alex Văsieș
- Ioana Vintilă
- Elena Vlădăreanu
Russia
- Katja Perat
- Uroš Prah
- Gašper Torkar
Slovenia
- Eta Dahlia
- Galina Rymbu
Spain
- Berta García Faet
- Arturo Sánchez
- Elena Medel
- Luna Miguel
Sweden
- Anna Axfors
- Kristofer Folkhammar
- Linn Hansén
Syria
- Raed Wahesh
United Kingdom
- Emily Berry
- Crispin Best
- Denise Bonetti
- Sophie Collins
- Livia Franchini
- Oli Hazzard
- Heir of the Cursed
- Sam Riviere
- Richard Scott
- Lucy K. Shaw
- JL Williams
United States
- Kaveh Akbar
- Oscar Bruno d'Artois
- Ariana Reines