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Born in November 1984 in Ploiești, Romania, Letiția grew up with Urmuz & Naum between commie-chique brutal architecture. The only child of only children, she took diligently to presenting offerings of her love and commitment to her small circle of caregivers in the form of good grades and praise from her educators. She studied Journalism (only to stay away from it) and Film (also professionally distanced from), working jobs to pay the bills on a densely populated island with a high standard of living, where her struggles might pale and get memefied as first world problems. She writes, works as a substitute teacher, and takes care of a bookstore, a dog, and a beautiful child (listed here in reverse order of appearance).
Hi Letitia! It’s a pleasure to sit down with you. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what you did before starting SUPeR?
I was a total rebel. An outlaw, somewhere between a petty spy and a minor Don Quixote-like character. But I kept a low profile by going to school, serving beers and amerikenos, and being a mother.
Let’s go back in time a little bit. Seeing that you’re originally from Romania you tell me about how and why you ended up in Copenhagen Denmark?
I was studying Journalism in Sibiu and I was restless. So I joined a student organization that insisted people should be their own leaders and quoted stuff that Ghandi has or could have said. I had a lot of fun and when I became president of my local chapter I went to a conference in Lithuania, where I ate pink soup and fraternized with fellow AIESEC-ers from all over Europe. I made friends with the danish delegation which made me apply for a job in AIESEC Denmark – I got it and lived here for one year. Then I went to India for a year after that, doing an internship through the same organization, but at the end of it I wanted to go back to Copenhagen, or I wanted to go back to school, or to the feeling of freedom I had experienced living there. One of these three or maybe all of them. So I came back. And just haven’t left yet.
So what was it about Denmark that appealed to you that made you want to stay around :D?
Well, I guess it was exactly this freedom that gave me a boundless sense of adventure and going with the flow. I didn’t feel judged or pressured to prove myself by way of the social hierarchy system so pervasive in Romania. Getting knocked-up definitely helped also.
Alright, and then last year (2023), you opened SUPeR. Everybody’s saying that printing is dead and physical bookstores is a thing of the past. So what made you want to open a bookstore?
You know that’s gold to contrarians. And being one is possibly a bit of cultural heritage, in romanian we have a human name for it: Gică Contra (like if footballers Gică Petrescu and Cosmin Contra had a love baby). I think it’s how some of us take a little extra pleasure going through life, by just doing a lot of things opposite to what is expected of us. There’s a bit of playful teasing energy in that, have you ever played backgammon with a romanian? Then you’d understand. Or get offended. (I have a backgammon set in the bookstore.)
Yeah so I had just been fired from the job where I was making amerikenos and where I was going to start a revolution (just before I got to start that revolution). And in that mix of feelings (relief, fear, dread, angst) I started applying for sitting-down jobs. The kind that require a masters degree, but I’d be writing copy to push sales for products I didn’t stand behind, which gave way to a crisis of deconstruction: that whole who am I and what am I doing with my life? tirade that I’m still not finished answering. It was partly settled when my mom gifted me Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu (who was my dreamboy writer twenty years ago) and this book by itself just brought me back to life, brought me back to me, reminded me of what I’m burning to do: seriously fun stuff with seriously fun people via books, film and music.
Can you walk me through that whole process. From initial idea, to scouting locations, to end result?
Supertimebooks (our publishing arm) was the first-born, four years ago: from a gut feeling of let’s do a thing our way, let’s make a platform for publishing that becomes a mycelium for connection and creation. A space of mediation and meeting for productions and formats marginalized in the dominant publishing industry – genres and subjects deemed too experimental, excessive, minimal, unprofitable, radical subjectivities that don’t fit in the mainstream.
It was a project born out of friendship and wanting to do what we wanted to do (with my friend Tinna). We spent the corona lockdown in her house, with our boyfriends and kids, and turned her basement into our publishing friend-cave. We made the first book there and it was wow, we did it, it can be done!
Then after the Solenoid reading experience we played shop for a bit, in a Nørrebro basement, on the side street of a side street, we called it superXspace. It will forever remind me of when I was a kid and we decided to move into our neighbor’s abandoned chicken coop, with the duvets and pillows from the house. It lasted for about an hour and our caretakers were frumious. superXspace lasted just as long but we learned in that hour as much as in a year.
Even though the book-coop dream ended fast, my hunger only got bigger. And so did the financial concerns, which prompted me to join the corporate ranks to save up money. This bookstorebug had entered my bloodstream, and every hour spent on that comfortable rotating ergonomic chair added more weight to the bookstore-but-go-all-in! dream. One day. Some day! Maybe in a year. Plan it. Be a good girl.
Only I was not going to listen to my own advice. Who does? I didn’t get to scout locations, I accidentally passed by the space we currently have on Blågårdsgade, saw the for rent handwritten note on the window, raised my shoulders, tilted my head, and thought why not?
And so, with a minor loan and major doubts I signed the lease and tried to figure it out. I’ve heard “you’re so brave” many times this past year and got to think about this word, brave, a lot. It was reckless, what I did. It was a little bit stupid and a little bit crazy. And I didn’t do it cause I was brave, I did it cause I was afraid of what I would be if I hadn’t done it. So maybe fear and courage are the same, courage is just the expression of fear, it’s fear exposed, brought to light, the only positive expression of fear.
So why books, and not a clothing store or a poster store for example?
Books are life. And besides being a source for ideas, they are also somehow just a front, a point of initial contact. It’s really meant to be a place for happenings, not in the performance art sense but in the sense of action. Of connection. Of community. Of building things together, whether it is a south-american authors shelf, a workshop about writing your shame away, or some kind of revolution.
How do you go about curating the book and magazine selection? Anything specific you look for?
It’s very alandala (a romanian term apparently borrowed from greek άλλα άντ’ άλλα) – meaning chaotic (at least in romanian). I got a lot of books I would like to read, I sometimes choose by the cover (which should be acceptable, graphic designers put a lot of work into condensing the essence of a book in its cover), if I really like an author I will check what else the publisher has put out, recommendations from friends and people coming into the bookstore, that kind of thing.
I go between known & safe and totally new & exciting. There’s quite an even mix of fiction, theory and critique, essays of the now, a bit of art and design, a kids’ section, a zine section, plus a little borrow-shelf. And I’m working on having some new things in by the end of this year, like a danish and a spanish language shelf.
It’s been about a year since SUPeR opened. Looking back, what has been some of the biggest obstacles so far?
Obstacles that I’ve sort of dealt with, or obstacles that I’m still tackling? I’ll talk about the first, I have a bit more words for that. Mostly it was calming the panic that I’m doing something wrong, that I’m shooting in the dark, that I forgot some number or pressing some button or declaring something and it will all blow to smithereens and drag me down with it. Also learning to cope with the chaos method (not sure if it has chosen me or I, it). I thrive and am guilt-free on it, since it’s only my head on the line, but I have days when I get really overwhelmed. I would welcome some more discipline.
Entering this new Independent bookstore owner world, is there anything that has surprised you?
Just how silly but fun it is to reinvent the wheel – I don’t have experience from this world nor have I made an effort to find out how other bookstores do it, it was going to be an experiment in doing what I want, with the resources available. These resources turned out to be invaluable in the sense of other people’s time and involvement. And it is kind of fun to not just have a bookstore, but this living organism with books and happenings shaped by everyone who chooses to join in whatever capacity. I love feeling like a bystander sometimes, or like a proud parent, looking at how my kid is making their way through the playground on their squeaky tricycle, falling, getting up, looking back from time to time and smiling at me with ice cream around their mouth or a very snotty nose, but real joy.
Alright Letitia. I always ask these two questions at the end of an interview. The first is. What’s your favorite movie(s) and why?
For many years I used to say Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati). The movie I loved the most this year is Don’t expect too much from the end of the world (Radu Jude), it has that tiring Romanian New Wave pace which I love, and it says so much with very little. It’s also got the absurd tucked in between all the layers, it’s a great cinematic cake.
The second is. What song(s) are you currently listening to the most right now?
I am in an Automatic bubble. It’s a band from LA and the song that I’m looping is called Turn Away.