Carmen Firan (Romania / USA)

CARMEN FIRAN was born in Craiova, on November 29, 1958, in the family of the writer Florea Firan. After completing her school studies in her hometown, she graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Craiova, but at the same time approached literature with a stylistic breadth – poetry, drama, prose, facilitating her entry into the literary world, debuting in 1979 in the pages of the magazine Luceafărul, after having already become a constant contributor to Viața studențească. Since 1997, she has worked as a program director at the Romanian Cultural Center in New York (currently the Romanian Cultural Institute), and since 2000 she has settled permanently in the United States.

Poet, prose writer, essayist, author of plays and film scripts, Carmen Firan holds the First Prize in North American Poetry awarded by the prestigious magazine New York Review of Books, 1998. Between 1990 and 1997 she was executive secretary at the Romanian Cultural Foundation, then, until 2001, director of programs at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. She settled in the United States and became director of development at the Pro Patrimonio Foundation, dedicated to the restoration of Romanian cultural heritage. She published dozens of volumes of poetry and prose in Romania and the USA, and is a member of the Society of American Poets and the PEN Club of New York.