News from Club Revdepov

Let’s start with the most exciting news: enrollment in our creative writing workshop at Vama Veche is now open! You can apply until the 15th of May. We have a new trainer: writer T. O. Bobe.

We are also preparing for a new scriptwriting workshop that will take place during the summer. If you have an idea for a film, send it to us until the 20th of May and come learn from director Igor Cobileanski and scripwriter Cecilia Ștefănescu.

If you are curios how is the stop motion workshop doing, have a look at some of the characters that will be animated very soon:

Alumni news: Florin Spătaru just published an ebook, Angelica Stan is preparing a poetry book.

News from Academia Motanov

Our 5th creative writing workshop for children ended in April. Writer and trainer Adina Rosetti had 15 kids this edition, you can read here some of the stories they wrote.

Ștefania Iorgoiu is our new teacher at Academia Motanov, she inspired children to see calligraphy as an art, a way to play with letters, colors, textures. The first calligraphy workshop for children finished last week.

In the mood for a laugh? Read the very short stories written by second graders in the 2 hours they spent with our volunteer writers Larisa Băltărețu and Monica Cristina Tarța.

News from Revista de Povestiri

Read the great new short stories published in the magazine, chosen by writers invited to Creative Writing Sundays.

We also published two interviews – with writer Mihai Bădică and writer Adina Popescu.

(c) by Bolli www.PicSelStudio.de

If you wonder what books to read next, maybe you’ll get inspired by Andreea Apostu’s recent book reviews.

And don’t forget to send your short story to our literary contest until the 1st of June!

Let us brag about what is new in every project!

Club Revdepov.  As we promised in late 2015, we designed a few new workshops.

Creative Writing with Philip O Ceallaigh. First edition starts on the 4th of March, it is a bilingual workshop for Romanians who write fiction or non-fiction in English. Here is an interview with Philip.

Stop motion animated film with Serghei Chiviriga. At the end of this workshop, every participant will have a very short film created from scratch. All they need is a camera and a laptop. And to get their homework done for every meeting, of course.

Manuscript feedback. For those who have written a book and they want the opinion of a writer they admire before sending it to publishing houses.

Academia Motanov. One new workshop:

Fun calligraphy for children with Ștefania Iorgoiu. Playing with various writing instruments, applying calligraphy on t-shirts, crafting decorated letters will make children enjoy calligraphy more.

Revista de Povestiri Aside from the short stories we publish (selected by the writers invited to Club Revdepov workshops), we started to publish book reviews. Andreea Apostu will write a review every week, of short stories books and of books written by Romanian writers.

This was our news. Apart from the new things, we continued with our regular activity, among which Creative Writing Sundays and the calligraphy workshop.

We made it to 2016, yaaay. Holidays are over, booo.

Our first poetry workshop ended with a public reading

At the end of the poetry workshop with Simona Popescu, in November, every participant read his best poems in a cozy atmosphere in Londophone. There was also some funny improv and guest poets joined in, reading from their works.

Simona Popescu

Sorin Gherguț

Andrei Zbîrnea

#Colectiv Delivery charity fair raised over 7000 eur

The event we organized on the 28th of November to raise money for those injured in the fire at Colectiv Club in Bucharest a month earlier was a great success. In just 10 days we gathered indie magazines, books, paintings, collages, t-shirts, tote bags, jewelery, home decor products, even furniture donated by creators. We encouraged people to come shop for Christmas and contribute to the recovery of the injured at the same time. We donated the money to Estuar Foundation, who was among the firsts to get involved in helping the victims of the tragedy.

Team

Calligraphers unite!

In December, we had the idea of bringing together all alumni of our calligraphy workshop. They are now around 150. Those who managed to get to Fabrica Club had a good time and exchanged tricks and techniques (and wrote on tables, but don’t tell anyone).

Creative Writing Sundays

Maria Manolescu, Marius Chivu, Lavinia Braniște, Corina Sabău, T. O. Bobe are the writers who came to give feedback on young writers’ short stories. They chose the ones they liked best and we published them in Revista de Povestiri.

T. O. Bobe

Marius Chivu

Maria Manolescu

Lavinia Braniște

Corina Sabău

Short stories contest

We published the stories selected by Veronica Niculescu in December, and now we have another edition of the contest, but this time T. O. Bobe is the grand jury. Deadline: 1st of March.

New workshop: creative writing in English

Club Revdepov just announced a new fiction and non-fiction workshop. The trainer is the Irish writer that lives in Bucharest since 2000, Philip O Ceallaigh. Enrollment is open until the 15th of February.

What you will find at #Colectiv Delivery.

ipp

Transhumance going extinct Ultima transhumanţă

Print

Let’s see what we’ve been up to last month. Maybe it’s a good thing that we’ve decided to write this activities journal, it helps us better keep track of everything.

We successfully launched the science fiction anthology written by the alumni of our workshop, look how many people came! We wrote more about it here.

Our creative writing workshop for children finished in October, see how happy they are?

Read more about it and read the stories they wrote here.

Creative Writing Sundays was glad to receive writer Veronica D. Niculescu for the first time. She is also the jury for the writing contest happening now on Revista de Povestiri. As you may have seen, we already published stories from CWS on the magazine’s website, selected by our recent guests> Cezar Paul Bădescu, Vasile Ernu, Veronica D. Niculescu, Maria Manolescu and Marius Chivu.

We finished yet another calligraphy workshop and found a saddening way to use it – to write some lyrics from a song by Goodbye to Gravity, the band playing in Colectiv when the fire started.

With the aim of helping those that are still struggling to stay alive or are already recovering, we are organizing a charitable creative fair this Saturday, at Grădina Verona, in partnership with Cărturești. #Colectiv Delivery is the name of the fair, and it is supported by artists who donated their work. All revenue from sales will be donated to Fundația Estuar who will direct it to the victims in hospitals.

To finish on a high note, we’re proud of our communication workshop, which recently celebrated its two years anniversary. Our gratitude for Magda Bunea’s dedication to her beloved NESTworking.

Here is how the autumn started for us:

The 4th edition of the creative writing workshop at Vama Veche

We went with writer and critic Marius Chivu and his trainees at the seaside the first week of September. Weather was good, participants were eager to impress with their stories, in the evening we ate together, then we saw a movie or played a game. Cards Against Humanity is really fun! We made friends, we got a tan, we kissed summer goodbye.

Cezar Paul-Bădescu and Vasile Ernu @ Creative Writing Sundays

On the 20th of September, we started the 7th series of Creative Writing Sundays, where writers talk about a topic related to writing and then give feedback on the stories participants wrote. Cezar asked young writers to write a story in which to recreate a fairytale and recommended them to read the book he liked the most this year, The Snow Queen, by Michael Cunningham.

It was the first time writer Vasile Ernu came to CWS as a guest, so we made an interview with him, to get him acquainted to our community. He talked about Russian literature and gave feedback to those who wrote a short story in which the main character was an animal (this was the homework).

The 4th session of Pop-up Stories Club

On the 6th of October we met at Cărturești Verona with Billy Duagi (Bitdefender) and Cristina Ion (Lightwave Theatre) to discuss ideas like career choices, free time and others from Adina Rosetti’s novel, Deadline. It was the first time we filmed the event, you will be able to watch it on our YouTube channel very soon.

11th calligraphy workshop with Georgian Constantin and Sorin Trăistaru

Our trainers met for four weekends with the trainees in the same place at usual, Subsol Bar. Among the participants was Magda Bunea, our coach and trainer for the communication workshop.

Magda Bunea

Science Fiction anthology published at Millenium Books

Eroi fără voie is the name of the book that came out this fall, featuring the works of the first generation of alumnis of our science-fiction workshop: Iulia Albota, Mihai Alexandru Dincă, Andrei Duduman, Georgian Enuță, Mihai Giulvezan, Alexandra Medaru, Alexandru Orbescu, Andrei Panțu, Adrian Poenaru, Adrian Răducan, Valeriu Tudose. The launch will take place at Copper’s Pub, on the 15th of October (this Thursday), the coordinator of the anthology, Michael Haulică will be there to present it.

After more than one year of thinking that we should update our NGO pdf presentation, we finally decided to make a website instead. It’s a more dynamic way to present information, we can show you pictures of what we have done (oh, we really used that opportunity :D), you can easily find what you’re looking for.

This comes in an effort to better structure our activities so that they are clear for us and they are clear for you. We decided to revive revistadepovestiri.ro, turning the website of the short stories magazine we published from March 2012 until July 2013 into an online short stories magazine. Many people had the impression that it was an online magazine anyway, so why go against that. We also decided to separate the creative workshops we organize from the magazine, and put them in a new space, revdepov.ro. Lots of websites this summer, what can we say!

We really had a good summer. We went to the seaside at Vama Veche in June, with the creative writing workshop where Marius Chivu challenges new writers to experiment, we were in Cluj, at Transilvania International Film Festival where we saw mostly Norwegian movies (Out of Nature was particularly funny), we had some ideas for new workshops, we read books, we looked for shelter from the heat on lovely terraces, with friends.

We attended concerts and festivals, Pakivalo would be worth mentioning here. It’s a festival that celebrates solidarity, created in the memory of Nicolae Gheorghe, a Roma researcher in sociology that studied Roma communities in Romania in the 70s and 80s and promoted solidarity among and with the Roma people. He believed in the role non profits can play in building a more tolerant and inclusive society. More about him here.

We still have some summer days left and we plan on enjoying them at Vama Veche (again!) and, in general, spending more time off-line, like we used to when we were kids.