A few days ago, Ficțiunea magazine presented its annual awards — a pretext for a lively gathering in the garden of the Filipescu-Cesianu House on Calea Victoriei.
For those who don’t know, the magazine is published by a large collective (around 400 people): established artists from all fields, as well as others involved, in one way or another, in the idea of fiction — photographers, artistic content creators, fictionalizers of everyday life, interpreters, supporters, or conscious consumers of fiction, all aware that they are part of a hybrid artistic construct. In short: creators of fiction.
I chose this phrase deliberately. Fiction is not always creation. In essence, it is the subjective simulation of reality — a fabrication. Fictura (in Latin) means a “deceptive figure,” a symbolic and personal representation of the world — a synthesis.
At this very moment, we are witnessing an explosion of creativity. En masse, exactly as Nietzsche predicted, humanity participates in a hyperconstruct — a vast structure made on social networks out of images, texts, music, film, and more.
People who have never read a work of literature carefully craft the astonishing story of socks transformed, with a single snip of scissors, into talking gloves. This act — as useless and bizarre as it is time-consuming — is filmed and posted online. Countless people abandon their lives and tasks to watch to the end the miraculous metamorphosis of socks into gloves. And others make new films to comment on it.
This is just a tiny fragment of our daily life. It has permeated every art, quietly guiding the avant-garde.
For decades now, the arts have been blending in ways that make it impossible to return to classical forms and means. “Things are happening,” said Mircea Cărtărescu when receiving the award for Best Character. “It’s comfortable to step out of the artistic bubble,” added Eugen Jebeleanu, the young director from the National Theatre.
We live as artists inside a game, and the freedom to use any artistic means — or to connect with other creators from diverse fields — surely leads toward the future. The arts have long been known not to exclude one another, but today we speak, above all, of participation. Hence the search for meaning beyond the artist’s usual fabrications. In the “meta-verse,” to paraphrase a volume by Dan Mircea Cipariu, hybrid art begins.
That is why we gathered one evening in a garden — a traditional, typically Bucharest habitat — to celebrate visionary artists. That is why we awarded Jebeleanu’s The Seagull: because it offers a new experience of reading a classic work. It is a manifesto-performance, accompanied by other works of aesthetic transformation. All the other categories support it.
For the same reason, we needed a character like Theodoros — both classical and contemporary, symbolic, memorable, holding in his secret pocket a baroque, endless message.
Over the garden drifted verses from Levantul, and creators of imagery were invoked. We gathered around the hallucinatory Horodok of Adi G. Secară. Because we need aesthetic change.
The magazine Ficțiunea and the group of fiction creators used the awards as a pretext to present 17 exceptional artists. We admired the irony in Negoescu’s film ending, the “craftsmanship” of Ceaușoglu, the resolution in Dora Pavel’s work, and the freshness of Alexandru Lamba’s novel Seven Hollow Virtues and a Sinful Death.
As you might expect, the categories were not divided by genre or discipline. Nor were they based on reputation, hierarchy, or institutional importance.
Here are the awards:
Refined and Ingenious Artistic Style: Adi G. Secară – Horodok (poems), Eikon, 2022
Hybrid Creation with Manifest Value: Eugen Jebeleanu – The Seagull (Chekhov), TNB
Psychological Fiction with Social Impact: Alina Grigore – Blue Moon (film), screenplay and direction
Best Character: Mircea Cărtărescu – Theodoros, from the eponymous novel, Humanitas, 2022
Best Ending: Alexandru Lamba – Seven Hollow Virtues and a Sinful Death (novel), Litera, 2022
Popular Fiction: Dana Ștefănescu – Urban Photography
Special Award of the “Ficțiunea” Magazine: Dan Mircea Cipariu – Meta-Vers, Vellant, 2022
The Ten Best Short Stories Published in “Ficțiunea” (2022):
Rodica Bretin, Cristi Nedelcu, Ionuț Chiva, Dana Dumitru, Roxana Dumitrache, Allex Trușcă, Andrei Ungureanu, Andrei Simuț, Roxana Ruscior, and Alexandru Lamba.
Beyond the prizes lay the encounter itself — born from a shared desire for harmony. Ioana Nicolaie and Mircea Cărtărescu interrupted their vacation to come to the Filipescu garden. I was deeply moved by their effort to end so many sterile quarrels in the artistic world. The generosity of a true writer can, after all, mend a flawed world.
I believe in the creator’s strength — in the hand that Mircea Cărtărescu extended toward Ficțiunea.
Photo: Doina Ruști, Mircea Cărtărescu, Ioana Nicolaie
All those who attended came not only to endorse the awards but also to support change. Director Alina Grigore and actress Ioana Chițu — who played the lead role in her film — interrupted a tour to attend, determined to send a message. Jebeleanu slipped away from rehearsal to tell us how happy he was to see free artists.
Among the guests were well-known writers such as Dan Mircea Cipariu, Andrei Novac, Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu, Ioana Miron, Adi G. Secară, Roxana Dumitrache, Cristi Nedelcu, and Daniela Luca — along with emerging authors like Liviu G. Stan, Roxana Ruscior, Alexandru Lamba, Florin Spătaru, Dorian Dron, Andrei Ungureanu, Narcis Amariei, Alexandru Șerban, and many others. Actors, photographers, and television professionals joined us — many names, one community.
Now at its second edition, the Ficțiunea Awards aim to recognize outstanding artists from diverse fields — for nuance, for innovation, for achievements that are part of the great transformation we are all living through.
Nominations came from branches of the Association of Fiction Creators and collaborators of Ficțiunea magazine. The number of proposals determined the shortlist.
The jury was composed of six members this year:
Liviu G. Stan (writer), Adriana Irimescu (actress), Ligia Pârvulescu (writer), Cristina Bogdan (associate professor, anthropologist), Ciprian Handru (PhD candidate, Doctoral School of Letters), and Ileana Marin (professor, PhD).
Each category was decided by a single juror. We believe that all four nominees in every category deserve the award. Voting, averages, or backstage discussions seem outdated. From the very beginning, when we initiated these awards, the idea was that each prize should be decided by one member of the jury, through a public and courageous argument — openly.
From the moment I founded the Ficțiunea group, I decided to disregard an artist’s fame or visibility, focusing solely on the quality of their work. And I will continue to stand by this principle.
Alongside the six main prizes — for style, manifesto, psychological fiction, character, ending, and popular fiction — there was also a Special Award granted by the editorial team of Ficțiunea.
During the ceremony, we also celebrated the authors of the best short stories published in the magazine throughout 2022.
The garden event was organized by Andrei Novac, with Cristina Bogdan and Petre Nechita as hosts.
The ceremony was held in partnership with the Museum of Ages – Filipescu-Cesianu House/MMB, the Bucharest City Hall, and ARCUB.
Media support came primarily from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest, joined by Adevărul de Weekend, Cultura magazine, TVR Cultural, Radio România Actualități, Radio Cultural, Radio București FM, Agenția de Carte, and acasa.ro.
I thank them all on behalf of the Ficțiunea group.
Photo: Doina Ruști
But you know how it is: every time awards are granted, pain erupts. Especially in the literary world — the weaker the writer, the sharper the pain. There’s always some childish trumpeter nursing a broken heart, a Becali-style compiler of a massive work — not plagiarized, mind you, but stitched together from others’ writings and spiced with native insolence — or a newly literate would-be novelist weeping under the tyranny of gardens. Sometimes a career critic climbs onto a plastic crate somewhere in a distant neighborhood and shouts through a megaphone the messages sent by his patrons. All three serve the same master — a remnant from a dying world.
Meanwhile, in the garden, beneath the plane trees of the old Filipescu estate on Calea Victoriei, a new literature is being born.
And also in Adevărul.
In Ficțiunea
