Alta Ifland was born and grew up in communist
Romania. She came to the US as a political refugee in 1991 and, after a PhD in
French language and literature (University of Florida) and a DEA at the
University of Strasbourg, she taught for a brief period in academia, then
worked as a book reviewer, a writer in her third language (English) and a
literary translator from/into Romanian, French and English. She is the author
of two collections of prose poems (Voix de glace/Voice of ice,
bilingual, self-translated from French, 2008 Louis Guillaume Prize, reissued in
an improved edition by Punctum Books in 2025; and The Snail’s Song) and
two books of short stories (Elegy for a Fabulous World, 2010 finalist,
Northern California Book Award, and Death-in-a-Box, 2010 Subito Press
Fiction Prize of the University of Colorado). Ifland’s novels, The Wife Who Wasn’t and Speaking to No. 4, were published by New Europe Books in
2021 and 2022, respectively. Ifland’s latest novel, Two Queens and a Chronicler, was published in 2025 by Open Ends Press and Elegy for a
Fabulous World came out in France this year in her own translation. Ifland
represented Romania at "The Nights of Literature" in 2021 (New York)
and 2026 (Paris). After 30 years of life in the US, Ifland now lives in France.
1
- How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work
compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book (Voix de
glace/Voice of ice, prose poems, first edition 2007) is bilingual,
French/English, written in my second language (learned in school) and
translated into my third (learned as an immigrant adult). Even though it
received an important French prize, my life wasn’t changed in any way by it;
only my CV. Since I self-translate myself, my translations are part of my
creative work. My most recent work in English is an atypical historical novel, Two
Queens and a Chronicler (New York, Open Ends Press, 2025) written as a
dialogue between a Romanian-born American writer and two of Romania’s queens.
My latest translation is the translation into French of my first collection of
short stories written in English, Elegy for a Fabulous World (English
edition, 2009; French edition, 2026). To compare these works would be like
comparing two different identities. On the other hand, it would be interesting
to compare the first edition of Voice of ice to its 2025 edition because
the changes I made reflect major changes in my own life and mindset. I will
give you only one example: the line from the poem “Mourning the country” (first
edition), “What is a country? A fiction for the brainless” becomes “What is a
country? An impossible land” (second edition).
2
- How did you come to prose poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or
non-fiction?
At the time, I was more inclined toward lyricism than today,
and poetry is more open to lyricism than prose. The longer the form, the less
lyrical. Also, English being my third language, it was easier to start with a
shorter form.
3
- How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your
writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear
looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious
notes?
The only one of my books that came
out of copious notes is my first novel (as yet unpublished). Prior to this, I
had written prose poems and short stories, and it wasn’t easy to move from them
to a larger form with a coherent structure. Structurally speaking, there is a
greater difference between a short story and a novel than between a prose poem
and a short story. My other works (short stories, novels) are written without
notes and with only a few changes. The only work standing apart in the way it
was created is the first one (Voice of ice). I created the short pieces
in French in my head, and only after several versions (all memorized and
unwritten), I committed pen to paper, which meant that the written (final)
version is different that the original (unwritten) one. That’s why I claim that
this is a bilingual book without an original.
4
- Where does a prose poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an
author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you
working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Often, a prose poem or a short story
comes to me from a specific rhythm or phrase that I’ve read somewhere. I write
when I am inspired, even when I write novels—that is, I don’t suffer of
“writer’s block” because I never force myself to write. When I start working on
a novel, I don’t know all that will happen in it. Part of the pleasure of
creating resides for me in discovering the form and the content of the work as
it develops. While I have an idea about the work from the beginning, its
manifestation always “betrays” the initial concept. I like to surprise myself.
5
- Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the
sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing public readings, but
they are certainly not part of my creative process. Like Proust, I distinguish
between a public/social persona and a creative self.
6
- Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of
questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the
current questions are?
I studied philosophy in France in
the 90s and wrote my dissertation on the most “difficult” 20th
century French philosopher, Maurice Blanchot, so “theoretical concerns” are
very much part of my writing. My non-fiction book (part memoir, part theoretical
inquiry), Comment peut-on être Américain?/How Can One Be an American?, the
result of a 30-year reflection on differences between American society and
Europe, is scheduled for publication next year in France. It is a very complex
work with a thesis about the creation of American identity linked to the
creation of the country as a gradual conquest of land and of nature, which has
triggered a subliminal desire to control nature and replace it with artifice
and technology. Likewise, most of my novels address questions of cultural
differences between the US and (Eastern) Europe, the construction of reality
through language, and the different structures of thinking articulated
in/through the language we speak.
7
– What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do
they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
A writer is someone who works
primarily with language and offers a description of society or vision of the
world through his/her work. Whatever the content of a writer’s work, what
counts is the interplay between his/her inherently subjective selfhood and its
objectification in/through writing. It seems to me that this vision of the
writer is threatened in many Western societies and in particular in North
America where a writer is now expected to regurgitate certain ideological
dogmas and even use a ready-made language that reminds me of what we used to
call “wooden language” under communism. While in communist Romania, this
language was enforced by a dictator and a unique political party, in North
America, this expectation comes from the cultural institutions, the academics
and the writers themselves (not all, obviously, but those who occupy key
institutional positions). It is a mystery to me how such writers don’t find
this language repugnant and how they can imagine that by using it they are
“fighting oppression.” If your language is made of slogans, ready-made formulas,
academic jargon and ideological kitsch, no matter how well-intentioned, you
cannot free anyone else because you are yourself unfree.
8
- Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or
essential (or both)?
My experience in working with
American editors was extremely negative because they attempt to rewrite
your/one’s work according to their own vision of literature and what “good
writing” is supposed to be, or worse, according to what they imagine readers
want. I believe there are two main causes for this attitude: 1. creative
writing programs and the culture of the workshop. I am aware that there are as
many teachers as classes, and they are not all the same, but generally
speaking, these programs and workshops have created a type of student that no
longer regards a work of literature as the incarnation of a unique mind and
sensibility, but rather, as a product that can be manipulated (made “better”)
throughs some kind of collective or third-party input, whereby the latter is
made of people who are there by chance and may have nothing in common with the
author of the respective piece; 2. A hypercapitalist vision of literature and
of the publishing industry, where said work is treated, as I said, as a
product, and not as the materialization of a Subject’s mind and imagination. In
the process of rewriting done by many editors, this Subject is utterly
annihilated, which is even more ironic if said Subject happens to be an
immigrant and the editors make a big deal of their “support” of immigrants.
Usually, they support an essentialized abstraction called “immigrant,” but have
no respect for the individual. It goes without saying that I don’t object to
minor and necessary corrections of grammar and orthograph, but rather, to
changes of style and vision. So far, my experience with French editors has been
better (knock on wood!), though the younger ones are increasingly similar to
their American counterparts.
9
- What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you
directly)?
I hate advice when it comes to
literary writing because it’s based on the presumption that there is a “good”
way of writing and in order to achieve it, one needs to take a class or listen
to the best advice. In reality, what is good for one writer is bad for another.
Therefore, I neither take nor give advice.
10
- How easy has it been for you to move between genres (prose poems to short
stories to novels)? What do you see as the appeal?
It has been a natural, organic
process of moving from a “smaller,” more emotional genre to a “bigger,” more
analytical one. Almost all my novels are satire or social criticism, while my
short stories are absurdist and fable-like, and my prose poems have been
described as “surrealist.” The longer I lived in the US, the more I had
something (critical) to say about society, which could only be said in the
discursive form of the novel in the tradition of realism.
11
- What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one?
How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have no “typical” day because I
suffer of severe insomnia, and when my day starts depends on how I sleep. But I
generally start late and very slowly. I have coffee and read for about half an
hour; I only write late at night. Sometimes I go to bed at 4 am.
12
- When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of
a better word) inspiration?
I always return for inspiration to
classics and writers I love. To which writers, it depends on the language in
which I write at the time. If I write in French, my model is Proust. If in
English, it depends on my mood.
13
- What fragrance reminds you of home?
Baked or grilled eggplant, which in
late summer fills all the Romanian neighborhoods.
14
- David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any
other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual
art?
Many of the poems in Voice of ice
were inspired by Northern California nature and its wild beauty. Some of the
prose poems in The Snail’s Song are playful descriptions of small
animals (snails, porcupines, turtles). As for visual art, I am sometimes
inspired by film scenes, more rarely by paintings, though my first-published
novel, The Wife Who Wasn’t, a satirical comedy about Moldovan immigrants
in California, includes two characters who are painters of Orthodox icons (an
art with specific rules that I describe in detail) and the theft of a painting
by Egon Schiele. My second novel, Speaking to No 4, discusses
architecture, more specifically, differences between French monasteries and
Japanese temples.
15
- What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your
life outside of your work?
I have been shaped emotionally by 19th
century Anglophone novels, and intellectually by 20th century French
writers and philosophers. But underneath them all are hidden Romanian and world
folktales, which are the primary structure sustaining all the others.
16
- What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Not much. I don’t have a bucket list,
and I hate extreme sports and similar adventures. I have mostly bourgeois
dreams: to travel. I lived for 30 years in the States, so I haven’t seen much
of Europe, and I would like to see as much of it as possible. I haven’t even
seen most of Romania, my country of birth. Outside of Europe, I would like to
go back to Japan, a country whose culture I find fascinating and whose language
I once attempted to learn. Learn Japanese, I suppose this could be a goal for
the future.
17
- If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or,
alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a
writer?
My dream was to be a figure
ice-skater or a classical ballerina, but my parents were not the kind to
encourage such ideas, and, alas, it is too late now. But I wrote a novel (as
yet unpublished) in which the main character is an ice skater—fiction is the
best revenge against life.
18
- What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Maybe the fact that as a child and a
teenager, my biggest pleasure was reading. Or maybe the fact that my
first-grade instructor told me in front of everybody else that I wrote like a
writer. Ever since, I’ve wanted to be a writer.
19
- What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I haven’t read a “great” book in a long time, but the most
recent good book I read is Le Jardin des rochers by the celebrated Greek
writer Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote this fascinating novel about China and
Japan in 1936 in French. The last great film: Que la bête meure (May
the Beast Die), 1969, by French director Claude Chabrol.
20
- What are you currently working on?
I am translating into French my
second novel, Speaking to No 4, which will be published early next year
in France.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
