CELA writers and translators at FILIT Iași

Saturday, October 25, 2025, FILIT, the International Festival of Literature and Translation in Iași will host two events from the European program CELA – Connecting Emerging Literary Artists, a project for training and supporting a new generation of European writers and translators.

A meeting dedicated to several duos of foreign writers and Romanian translators will take place at Casa FILIT (Piața Unirii) at 12:00 p.m. 

Slovenian writer Ajda Bračič and translator Sergiu Lozinschi, Corinne Heyrman, writer (Netherlands/Belgium) and translator Mădălina Balea, and Dutch translators Andreea Bălteanu and Alexa Stoicescu will take the stage. The dialogue, moderated by Doris Mironescu, will focus on the experience of young writers and translators working together, of consulting with a mentor, and getting to know an extended literary community. The event is an opportunity to present the novels selected in the CELA project in order to be proposed to Romanian publishers for translation.

Starting at 4 p.m., the Translators' Café will take place at Acaju Café (2A Anastasie Fătu Street), a meeting that brings together the ten Romanian literary translators from the CELA project: Mădălina Balea and Andreea Bălteanu (Dutch), Jessica Bilcec (Ukrainian), Ilinca Gângă (Spanish), George Doru Ivan (Italian), Sergiu Lozinschi (Slovenian), Maria Andrei (Bulgarian), Aleksandra Petrov (Serbian), Andrei Săndulescu (Czech), and Oana-Andreea Stoe (Polish).

Literary translators and anyone interested in joining the discussion are welcome to attend this meeting to find out more about the project and about translators' access to the book market.

Details of the program can be found on the FILIT website, and you can get to know the CELA guests better, browsing through excerpts from the stories of CELA writers and translators in literary publications.

CELA is a program co-funded by the European Union's Creative Europe program and implemented by 13 cultural entities from 11 countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Serbia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Romania), which offers support, training, and promotion to emerging generations of authors—writers and translators. 

Halfway through this edition of the project, after a first year of translation, mentoring, training, and networking, CELA participants present themselves to the public and book markets in the project countries, taking part in literary festivals and meetings with the public.

The Romanian writers from the first half of the project also participate as guests at partner literary festivals, alongside their translators: Ioana Maria Stăncescu at the Prague Book Fair, Iulian Bocai at the Passa Porta Festival in Brussels, and Paula Erizanu at the Eñe Festival in Madrid.

The partner organizations in Romania in the CELA – Connecting Emerging Literary Artists project are: the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Iași, together with the ARTLIT Association – Association of Literary Translators in Romania and AER – Association of Publishers in Romania. You can find out more about the project here.