Adrian Schiop hosts a creative writing workshop, free of charge in the limit of the available space, consisting of a few different approaches. The workshops are at the crossroad between fiction and narrative journalism, between storytelling and journal, closely following recent trends in quasi-documentary style literature (non-fiction, autofiction and so on). By the end of the course, participants must be able to hand in a creative piece on a marginal character or on an encounter with a representative of marginalised social groups.
At the end of the workshop, the best text that fits with the specific of Casa Jurnalistului, our media partner for this project, is published on their website in the Guests section.
A selection of the rest of the texts can be read in the readings section below.
Schedule
Wednesday 18.2.2015 7-9pm
The first session dealt with the topic of manele, as an opportunity to elaborate on the life philosophy of various marginals, thugs and troublemakers, corner-street boys and so on.
Tuesday 3.3.2015 7-9pm
The second meeting will host Ştefan Mako from Casa Jurnalistului, the author of a beautiful text about a lesbian hustler from Gara de Nord – Am fost smardoaica.
Wednesday 11.3.2015 7-9pm
The third session will be a discussion about the first episode of the HBO Romanian series Umbre – where it fails and why it fails. What should more plausible dialogue and characters look like?
Thursday 19.3.2015 7-9pm
The fourth meeting will have as a guest the Ferentari barman on whom one of the characters in the Soldații novel is based upon – he will recount stories from Adrian’s time in Ferentari and will compare the fictional text to the reality in order to establish where it tells the truth and where it departs from it.
Friday 27.3.2015 7-9pm
The fifth and last meeting will consist on feedback to written assignments, the literary texts participants are expected to create by the end of the course.
Photos from the workshops by Tiberiu-Mihail Cimpoeriu.
Reading Material
Biography
Adrian Schiop
My real name is Adrian-Ion Schiop, but I go by the pen name Adrian Schiop, which is also the name of the main character in my novels. I was born in Porumbacu de Jos, a village in Sibiu county, at the bottom of the Făgărași mountains, by the river Olt, where I first went to primary school. In 1997 I graduated from the Faculty of Psychology and Science of Education at the Babeș-Bolyai University and I went on to do a Master’s degree in Linguistics at the same university. In 2014 I completed my Ph.D. in Sociology at the National School for Political and Administrative Studies on the subject of manele, with the title Cunningness in an Envious World. The Social Universe of ‘Manele’ Ethno Pop. My professional path includes five years as a Literature high-school teacher (mostly at an industrial high-school in Cluj) and another five years as a cultural journalist (mostly at the România Liberă newspaper). Presently I am working for the Museum of Roma Culture which was recently created in Bucharest.
As a writer I made my debut in Fracturi magazine with a fragment from my first novel, pe bune/pe invers, which was published two years later by Polirom publishing house. Since then I have published two other novels, Zero Grade Kelvin (Polirom, 2009) and Soldaţii. Poveste din Ferentari (Polirom, 2013) which centers on a romantic affair between a journalist-anthropologist and 34 year old former convict who spent most of his formative years in jail (between the ages of 15 and 30). Soldaţii has won two prizes for best novel of the year 2014, from the weekly magazine Observatorul Cultural and from the Book Industry Gala and has gathered overwhelminghly positive reviews. Also as an art project, in 2009 I organized a party with the support of the National Dance Center at the National Theatre in Bucharest, which was, I believe, the first manele party for hipsters and the intelligentsia; as well as a public debate, featuring Ion Grigorescu, also at the Dance Center, in 2011, when the artist told me that the only way to make money, if that is what I want, is to forget about it, because this is how things are, the only people who make money are those who don’t want it.
I am also a collaborator of Criticatac online magazine, for which I authored a few articles, including How Romanian Elites Burried Manele. A Cocalari Story (2010), about the moral panic surrounding the manele phenomenon, which has had quite an effect in terms of informing future debated in intellectual milieus.