Maria-Teodora CREANGĂ is a teaching assistant in the Department of British and American Studies at Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu. She holds an MA in Translation Studies (2001) and is currently enrolled in a doctoral program in philology at Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj Napoca. She has been teaching English as a Foreign Language to various target groups as well as seminars in English Phonetics and Phonology, and Sociolinguistics. She has also developed an interest in Semantics, Pragmatics and more recently in Contrastive Linguistics and linguistic-based translation theories.

Eric GILDER is a University Professor and Fellow of the C. Peter Magrath Centre at Lucian Blaga University (Sibiu, Romania), holding a Ph.D. in Communication (rhetorical emphasis) from The Ohio State University (USA). Before coming to the University of Sibiu in 2000, he has served as a Visiting Lecturer with the Civic Education Project in Romania (1992-1994), as an Associate Professor in the Faculties of Sociology and Foreign Languages at the University of Bucharest (1994-2000), and as a Visiting Lecturer (and then Professor) at Kyonggi University in South Korea (1998-2000). In link with his academic appointment, Dr. Gilder currently serves as an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church of the USA serving in the Anglican Diocese in Europe. In these capacities, he also serves as a periodic Visiting Professor to Cuttington University (Liberia, West Africa) and as Book Reviews Editor of the international UNESCO-CEPES publication, Higher Education in Europe. Author of three books and multiple studies, he has published extensively in Romanian, American and international journals and books on topics of communication (rhetoric, mass media and theory), cultural studies, and international higher educational policy and practice. He is a member of the Society for Research into Higher Education (UK), The World Association of Christian Communication (Canada) and the World Futures Studies Federation (USA).

Carla LEVER completed her MA in English and Gender at the University of Cape Town, South Africa in 2006. Her research interest falls in the field of contemporary feminist literature, with particular emphasis on the concept of gender performance. She also specializes in theatre, contemporary literature and cultural studies. She currently lectures in English at the University of South Africa.

Svenn-Arve MYKLEBOST is a doctoral candidate and teacher at the University of Bergen, Norway. His research concerns comic books and Visual Studies, semiotics, Early Modern drama, especially Shakespeare, and adaptation theory. His doctoral thesis examines Shakespeare in modern comic book adaptations, seen through a framework of Peircean semiotics and the art historical theories of Erwin Panofsky. Trained as a graphic designer, Myklebost also draws background graphics for computer games and plays in a rock band.

Adriana-Cecilia NEAGU is Associate Professor of Anglo-American Studies at Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj, The Department of Applied Modern Languages. She is the author of Sublimating the Postmodern Discourse: toward a Post-Postmodern Fiction in the Writings of Paul Auster and Peter Ackroyd (2001), In the Future Perfect: the Rise and Fall of Postmodernism (2001), and of numerous critical and cultural theory articles. Dr Neagu has been the recipient of several pre- and postdoctoral research awards. Previous academic affiliations include an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Edinburgh and visiting positions at Oxford University, University of Bergen, Tuebingen University, University of London, and a Leverhulme Research fellowship at University of East Anglia. Her teaching areas are diverse, combining literary and cultural studies disciplines. Her main specialism is in comparative cultural studies and translation theory and practice. At present her research centres on the nation-translation nexus and the new paradigms of cultural identity in the U.K. Since 1999, Dr Neagu has been Advisory Editor and, since 2004, Editor-in-Chief of American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania.

Janet NEIPRIS, an internationally-produced, award-winning American playwright, has had plays produced at major theatres in the U.S. and internationally, including the National Theatre, London and Manhattan Theatre Club, N.Y. A  Small Delegation, was named one of the best plays of the year by The Philadelphia Enquirer, (Annenberg Center production), one of the best plays by women (Studio Theatre, D.C. production), and was produced in the U.S. and Beijing. She has also written for film and television, NPR and the BBC. A composer, she has written the lyrics and score for the children’s musical Jeremy And The Thinking Machine, which was produced by the National Theatre, London and published by Samuel French. She is the recipient of grants including two NEA Grants in playwriting, a Rockefeller Grant, and two Bellagios. She holds the Chair of the Graduate Playwriting and Screenwriting Dept., Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her book To Be A Playwright was published in 2005 by Routledge, and she has taught playwrights in China, Indonesia, Florence, Prague, London, and South Africa. She has been a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Tony Committee, Writer’s Guild of America, East, and PEN.

Rebecca NESVET is an American playwright, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire, and Literary Manager of New York’s Origin Theatre Company. Rebecca graduated in 2008 from the MFA program in Dramatic Writing at New York University, with the Department Chair’s Award and a Sloan Writing Grant. Other awards include First Place in the Association for Theater in Higher Education and Bruce Brown Foundation competitions and Second Place at Sonoma County Rep. Recent productions: The Girl in the Iron Mask (Babes With Blades, Chicago; The Georgetown Theatre Co., Washington DC) and The Shape Shifter (Thorny Theater, California). The Speed of Light/Vitezi Luminii, a sci-fi update of Eminescu, as translated by Adriana Neagu and Calin Deac, was stage-read at the 2007 Sibiu International Theatre Festival and is forthcoming in the Romanian magazine Drama. Rebecca’s research has appeared in journals including the RES, Women’s Writing, and Shakespeare International Yearbook; her poetry in (Haiku Quarterly, Avocado), and her science fiction in Expanded Horizons.

Cristian PANAÎTE was born and raised in Romania, and began writing plays during his undergraduate years at Bennington College in the United States. His work, which has received productions and public readings in New York and Bucharest, includes Bus & Our Children (Play Company); Cross Section of Decomposing Bodies (DramAcum Finalist), and Trash (Immigrants Theater Project). After receiving his Masters’ degree in theatre (Miami University), he worked Off Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre, and for several American regional theater companies and festivals. He is currently studying for the PhD in Humanities/Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Martin PERKS is a final-year student in Creative Writing and History at the University of Gloucestershire, England. An aspiring playwright, he also works at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Saviana STĂNESCU is one of the most prominent Eastern European writers to have emerged after the fall of communism. Her work has been published by United Stages, Heinemann Drama and Smith and Kraus, and includes Waxing West, at New York’s LaMama and Sibiu’s International Theatre Festival, and also winner of the 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Script, Diary of a Clone, GOOGLE ME!, Black Milk (4 plays), Final Countdown, and Aurolac Blues (in Plays and Playwrights 2006). Stănescu’s plays have been widely presented internationally and in the US. Recent productions include Vicious Dogs on Premises, at New York’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (Julia Miles Theatre of the Women’s Project) and, to be produced by Origin Theatre Company, Lenin’s Shoe. She teaches at New York University.

Lucia VERONA is a playwright, prose-writer and translator. Born in Arad, Romania, Verona attended the Music Academy in Bucharest, where she studied opera, and published her first story in 1974. She co-authored several radio and teleplays with late husband H. Salem. Her publications include the plays and play collections The Traveller and Shakespeare (2005), The Nuclear Secret (2005), Grand Hotel Europa (2000), the novel Required Maze (2001), and a translation of Hungarian author Jokai Mor’s Eppur si Muove (1984). Today, Verona writes for the Romanian Drama! magazine, serves as President of the Playwriting and Theatrical Criticism section of the Bucharest Writer’s Association and President of the International Centre for Women Playwrights, and is a member of the Romanian Writers’ Union.

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