I will be touring the UK with five great writers in the weeks before Halloween to read from our new collection of spooky short stories, Modern Gothic, published by Fly on the Wall press, winner of The Bookseller’s Small Press of the Year (North) award. This is the book This is the blurb “Embark on […]
Category Archives: Comment
Opinion pieces with a satirical edge from 2012 onward
Can a regenerative farm succeed in Romania? A feature published in Scena9 in Romanian and in English At the edge of a village in Dâmbovița county, I leave a 4×4 parked on a strip of land, and walk into a field, fringed by wild grass and tall trees. Lines of parsnip, lettuce and cabbage open […]
I worked for over a month as a volunteer trying to help Ukrainian refugees in Bucharest, and this is what I discovered, published in Scena9 I am talking with a friend of mine. She volunteers in a transit camp in Bucharest’s main railway station, Gara de Nord, for Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian attack. I […]
Ukraine’s capital is a memorial not only to the sacrifice of the oppressed against greater odds, but also to willpower, dynamism and revival. A short comment piece published in Scena9 Kyiv has always been a flashpoint between clashing states, cultures and ideologies. After each tide of destruction, the residents barely have enough time to mourn […]
How the Romanian capital still kills me—a version/preview for an article in Vice I first came to Bucharest as an English teacher in the 1990s, subsequently visited several times as a tourist, returned as a journalist, and then started a family in the Romanian capital. This is what has changed: When I was here in […]
We wanted to expose how Romanians are the main nationality of male prostitutes in Rome… and we did not do it An article co-authored with Vlad Odobescu and published in The Black Sea A taxi driver told us where to find boys. His name was Mario. He wasn’t an average taxi driver. He ran an […]
Today a cool March light is giving way to a humid afternoon, and I have just left the Anthony Frost English Bookshop in Bucharest, which has closed its doors. The reaction from the city’s passionate reading community has been shock and grief, as though a well-loved relative not seen for years has suddenly announced […]
A piece of invective published last year in the second issue of Jug magazine On the face of a ten-story 1980s block inspired by the architecture of Pyongyang, abseilers risk their lives to raise a giant poster of Marilyn Monroe sipping the metal lip of a Coke bottle, or Alicia Keys perfecting her skin with […]
A comment piece published in Scena9 During the negotiation process for Romania’s accession to the European Union in the early 2000s the question echoing through European capitals was: is Romania ready to join the EU? It was this word, repeated, again and again: ready. This was a subjective and emotive issue – there […]
A comment piece in Romanian on Contributors.ro A petty argument in the British conservative party between supporters and enemies of the European Union has forced the UK into a disaster. If the country leaves the 28-member bloc, financial ruin will spread across the continent, far right groups will seize control and the peacetime success of 70 […]
Michael Bird Writer & Journalist 