DENISA COMĂNESCU

A poet, editor and translator, Denisa Comănescu studied Romanian and English at the University of Bucharest. Since 2007 she has been general manager of Humanitas Fiction Publishing House and she has launched the first personalized series of world literature in Romania, “Denisa’s Bookshelf”, including more than 600 new titles published up late. Comănescu authored five volumes of poetry: Banishment from Paradise, 1979 (Writers’ Union of Romania Debut Prize); The Silver Knife, 1983; The Boat on the Waves, 1987; The Trace of Fire, 1999 (Oradea International Poetry Festival Prize), Now My Old Time Biography, 2000 – an audiobook of this volume, read by the author, was released in 2008 by Humanitas Multimedia. Volumes published abroad ‒ in Sweden: Glädje utan försoning, translated by Dan Shafran,1999; in Spain: Regreso del exilio – bilingual edition, translated by Joaquín Garrigós, 2008; in Italy: Ritorno dall’esilio – bilingual edition, translated by Bruno Mazzoni and Mihail Banciu, 2015; in Germany: Rückkehr aus dem Exil – bilingual edition, translated by Jan Cornelius, 2017.  Her poetry has been included in anthologies in more than fifteen countries. In 2003 she participated in the International Writers’ Program of the University of Iowa (www.uiowa.edu/~iwp). Comănescu translated into Romanian a selection of Alan Brownjohn’s poetry and one of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry. In 1999, she published an anthology of Romanian Women Poetry – Polish/Romanian edition: Strong – 28 Women Poets of Romania. Denisa Comănescu has been a member of the Writers’ Union of Romania since 1986. Former general secretary of the Romanian PEN Centre (1990–2004). A member of the European Cultural Parliament (ECP) since 2006.