S t e l a. A novel

READINGS United States

Cristofovici's reading tour in the US includes:
• Thursday, October 22, 2015, 7:00 pm., Utah Book Festival, The King's English Bookstore, Salt Lake City, Utah
http://www.utahhumanities.org/index.php/component/com_bookfestival /Itemid,288/id,266/view,event/
• Thursday, October 29, 2015, 7:30 p.m., Berry College, McAllister Auditorium, Mount Berry, Georgia
READING TOUR IMPRESSIONS, October 2015 PRESS

http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/ninebark-and-the-micro-press-movement/

For more than a year I have exchanged with my publishers – Sandra Meek, Michael Mejia, and Mindy Wilson – by mail only, yet when we met it felt like we had known each other for a long time. Publishing with Ninebark press gave me the chance to place my book in the hands of publishers whose philosophy I share, and I am happy that through that collaboration I have met three wonderful human beings.

In Salt Lake City as well as in Rome, Georgia and at Berry College I have met with a variety of readers, with high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and community members, some of them generous supporters of Ninebark press. Their questions were stimulating, showing an interest that I did not expect from such a wide category of readers, and a concern for both the creative process and the historical aspects of the novel which are so gratifying for the writer.

Having spent my youth in a context where the threat on the cultural act often equaled life threat, I am generally optimistic as far as the life of books goes within the boundaries of a democracy. My recent encounters with my American readers only confirmed that belief.

That trust and the landscapes of Salt Lake and Berry are now working their way into my new novel.

N.B. At Berry, it was a pleasure to visit the Moon Gallery with tintypes by Robert Turney. And, if you ever happen to be in Utah, don’t miss the King’s English Bookstore. It looks like a small welcoming house from the outside, and, when you get in, it opens like a chamber of echoes: a room and another, and yet another. It was uncanny to lock eyes with Joseph Brodsky and learn that the photograph was a trace of his reading there. An excerpt from Stela I had chosen to read that night included an appropriation from his Watermark!