Talk&Performative Readings&Book Launch on Immigration as Moral Experience

Phoenix-based writer and psychologist Anca Mizumsky one of the most poignant voices of Romanian diaspora talks about immigration as trauma and personal reinvention and the artistic opportunities of a life between cultures languages and geographies as part of a European and American launching tour of her novel Those Who Buy Stars (New Meridian Arts 2024) a cinematic page-turner about love power and the urge of immortality in the vein of Umberto Eco and James Clavell. With performative readings from the book by South African-American actress visual artist and author Arianne Banda the star of the Theater for the New City’s “Freedom Summer”.

Anca Mizumsky is a Romanian author who lives in Phoenix Arizona. Her works include: East (poems 1993) Letter of Discharge (poems 1995) Paper Guillotine (poems 2008) Anca of Noah’s Ark (poems 2009) Beyond (poems 2010) In the Softness of the Sky (poems 2012); Far from Hemingway (short stories 1989); My Suspended Land (essays 2018) and Those Who Buy Stars (novel 2022). The author's poems have been featured in two personal anthologies Madugrada - Songs of Love and Fury (2013) and Metropolitana (2018) as well as in numerous Romanian and international group anthologies: Strong. Romanian-Polish Anthology (1997) 27 Romanian Poets (Stockholm 2011) Mujer en la aduana - 10 poetas rumanas contemporáneas (Madrid 2022). She has received several awards for poetry. Her poems are translated into Swedish English Spanish French Italian Hungarian Albanese Czech and Chinese. As a psychologist and social activist Anca Mizumsky has published a long series of articles and essays her main areas of interest covering the concepts of dignity as a social construct collective trauma expressive art therapy and therapeutic writing.

Arianne Banda is a performance artist painter singer and practitioner of Afro-Indigenous medicine. Born and raised in South Africa she has resided in the US in recent years and currently lives in New York City. She has a BFA in acting from Boston University. Her recent acting credits include: “Bioadapted” (Transforma Theater 2024) “Maiden Voyage” (Flea Theater 2023) “Freedom Summer” (Theater for the New City 2023). An avid forager and creator of herbal remedies and natural body products Arianne is the author of Herbs and Plants for Food and Medicine (Microcosm Publishing 2023).

Host or Publisher Romanian Cultural Institute New York