Romanian-American writer Cristina A. Bejan on Tuesday began her national Romania tour to launch the Romanian translation of her award-winning poetry book „Cai verzi pe pereți” (Green Horses on the Walls) on International Poetry Day.
The launch of the historian and playwright’s debut book took place at the Cärturesti Verona in Bucharest. The book is published with Editura Tracus Arte and translated by Mădălina Mangalagiu. This launch was live-streamed on Facebook.
Green Horses On the Walls was a 2021 winner of the Human Relations Indie Book Award 2021 winner of the Independent Press Book Award.
The poems poems describe the horrors and the inherited trauma under communism in Romania, which her father fled from in 1969. She also writes about mental health and sexual assault.
Bejan will tour Bucharest, Sibiu, Brasov, and Timisoara over the course of two weeks. Her launches will feature local authors, such as Radu Vancu (Sibiu) and Romulus Bucur (Brasov).
Her Sibiu event is hosted by the Mayor Astrid Fodor, and is part of the partnership between her hometown Durham, NC in USA and Sibiu, which are recently connected as Sister Cities, a press release sent to Universul.net said.
In Timisoara she will launch her book in the European Capital of Culture at BOOKFEST, supported by the Two Owls bookshop.
Bejan is also launching her book „Intelectualii si fascismul in Romania interbelica. Asociatia Criterion,” (translated by Alina Pavelescu) with Editura Litera on March 31. She will have two appearances on public broadcaster TVR to discuss her book.
Her tour can be followed on Facebook and Instagram. Ultimately all videos of her poetry performances will be uploaded to her Youtube channel, the release said.
*Romania National Tour
CA/ VERZI PE PERETI ~ Cristina A. Bejan
Editura Tracus Arte ~ poezie // poetry book
BUCHAREST – Tues. March 21, 6pm, Cärturesti Verona,
feat. Mugur Grosu, with Zita Moldovan (actor) ~ World
Poetry Day broadcast on Facebook Livestream
SIBIU – Fri. March 24, 5:30pm, Sibiu City Hall, feat. Radu
Vancu, hosted by Mayor Astrid Fodor
BRASOV – Mon. March 27, 6pm, Multicultural Center
of the University of Transylvania, feat. Romulus Bucur
(Daytime lecture at Faculty of Letters)
TIMISOARA – Wed. March 29, 5pm, Reformed Church,
Birthplace of Revolution, IRL Pop-up & Instagram Live
@cristinaabejan_ladygodiva
TIMISOARA – Thurs. March 30, 7pm, BOOKFEST
(thanks to La Douà Bufnite bookshop)
BUCHAREST – Fri. March 31, Cärturesti Carusel, 5pm,
SURPRISE EVENT … to be announced soon!
BUCHAREST ARTHUB – Sat. April 1, 7:30pm, Open BiB
Cypher feat. Niko G x Kali, hosted by Rucsandra Pop &
Lady Godiva, prod. Bucharest Inside the Beltway.
A winner of multiple awards, in „Green Horses on the Walls” Bejan writes about her Romanian heritage, the inherited trauma of communism, love, mental health and sexual assault. The poems capture Bejan’s tortured love affair with the country her father escaped in 1969: Romania. Like so many exiles and migrants around the world, there is a compulsion to return and to leave the homeland. „I don’t think it will ever stop,” Bejan writes.
Romania suffered a brutal communist dictatorship for forty years, and these poems reveal the horrors and the inherited trauma that are products of such historical injustice. She also tackles the sensitive topics of mental health and sexual assault and with this collection hopes to fight the pervasive stigma surrounding both issues.
Synopsis „Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association”
In 1930s Bucharest, Romania’s most brilliant young intellectuals converged to form the Criterion Association. Bound by friendship and the dream of a new, modern Romania, their members included historian Mircea Eliade, critic Petru Comarnescu, Jewish playwright Mihail Sebastian and a host of other philosophers and artists, including Marietta Sadova. Together, they built a vibrant cultural scene that flourished for a few short years, before fascism and scandal splintered their ranks. Cristina A. Bejan asks how the far-right Iron Guard came to eclipse the appeal of liberalism for so many of Romania’s intellectual elite, drawing on diaries, memoirs and other writings to examine the collision of culture and extremism in the interwar years. The was the first English-language study of Criterion (published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan) and is the most thorough to date in any language. Now available in expert Romanian translation by Alina Pavelescu, this book grapples with the complexities of Romanian intellectual life in the moments before collapse.
Cristina A. Bejan is a Romanian-American writer, who is widely published as a historian, playwright, and poet. She earned a PhD and Masters in Modern History from the University of Oxford, fully funded by Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships. Bejan currently teaches history and theatre at Metropolitan State University of Denver in Colorado, USA. She previously worked as a researcher for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, where she conducted research in 12 languages and published 64 articles in the museum’s „Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Vol. 3.” Her Romanian grandparents met as university students in interwar Bucharest. You can learn more about her creative work at: www.cristinaabejan.com
