BOGDAN-ALEXANDRU STĂNESCU

BOGDAN-ALEXANDRU STĂNESCU (b. 1979), has been an editor of foreign fiction collections for almost 20 years. Between 2005 and 2020 he worked as editorial director for Polirom Publishing House, where he was responsible for publishing important authors, such as Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Vladimir Nabokov, Ernest Hemingway etc.

He is now editorial director for Pandora M Publishing House, where he coordinates the Anansi World Fiction collection. He is a book reviewer for Dilema Veche magazine and Observatorul cultural magazine.

He made his debut in 2010 with a book of essays written in the form of an epistolary exchange with Vasile Ernu, a well-known Romanian writer born in the Republic of Moldova: Ceea ce ne desparte. Epistolarul de la Hanul lui Manuc/What separates us. The Manuc Inn Epistolary Exchange.

In 2012 he published his first poetry collection, După bătălie ne-am tras sufletul/After the battle we stopped to catch our breath, which was shortlisted for the Observatorul cultural National Prize and the Radio România Cultural Prize.

In 2013 he published his second book of essays, Enter Ghost. Imaginary letters to Osip Mandelștam (a homage to close reading and to poetry), and in 2014, his second poetry collection, anabasis (shortlisted for the Radio România Cultural National Prize).

In 2017 he made his debut as a fiction writer, publishing The Childhood of Kaspar Hauser, a coming-of-age novel set in the last years of the Ceaușescu regime and in the 90s. The book won Thoreau’s Nephew National Prize, Radio Romania Cultural National Prize for Fiction, Le Prix du premier roman du Chambery and was shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature in 2018. The novel was translated into Hungarian, French, Macedonian, Bulgaria and Croatia.

In 2019 he published a biographical novel about the Romanian classic playwriter and fiction author I.L. Caragiale, The Lost Letter.

In 2020, he published his third collection of poems, Adorabilii etrusci/Those adorable Etruscans, winner of the George Cosbuc National Prize for poetry and shortlisted for the Observatorul cultural national prize.

ROMANIA