ICRNY: Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan @ BEA 2015

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Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan @ BEA 2015

Literature as Homeland and Continent

Friday, May 29, 7:30 pm, RCI New York Auditorium

(200 E 38^th Street, New York, NY 10016)

The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York invited Romanian writers Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan for a series of events at RCI New York, in Washington DC at the Library of Congress and The Romanian Embassy, and also for a series of events in San Francisco and California.

Romanian writers Ana Blandiana, Doina Uricariu and Romulus Rusan will read selections from their poetry and memoir books, and they will discuss their poetry and fiction.   Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan will also present the exhibit “The Memory as a Form of Justice,” dedicated to the world’s first Memorial of the Victims of Communism, in Sighet, Romania, along with a short film about the Memorial. 

Please join us on Friday, May 29, 7:30 pm, at RCI New York Auditorium at the event “Literature as Native Land and Continent” with Ana Blandiana, Doina Uricariu and Romulus Rusan.

Actors Vasile Flutur, Cristi Balint, Paul Cosma Cimpoieru will read poems and excerpts of prose, in Romanian and English.  

The evening continues with the lieder concert “George Enescu, Legendary Composer” with Michaela Mingheras, soprano, and Laetitia Ruccolo, piano.

Book signing and reception will follow.

Ana Blandiana is one of Romania's foremost poets and a leading dissident before the fall of Communism. Blandiana is known for her daring, outspoken poems, as well as her courageous defense of ethical values and acute responsiveness to present-day concerns. Her delicate, subtle and pointed poetry has gained her a large readership at home, her work has been widely translated in Europe, and she received numerous awards. ”The Hour of Sand” (Anvil Press Poetry, Ltd., 1990) is the first selection of her poems to be published in English. It introduces a fresh and distinctive voice in Eastern European poetry. “My Native Land A4” (Bloodaxe, 2014) is her most recent collection; it recreates a land of words, water, trees, cities with abandoned churches, fallen angels that cannot find their way back to heaven, and God who learned to roller-skate to try to reach the young. She is the President of the “Civic Academy” Foundation (Fundatia “Academia Civica”) and the Honorary President of the Romanian PEN Club.

Romulus Rusan is a Romanian writer, well known for his book “Greyhound’s America/America Ogarului Cenusiu” (Cartea Romaneasca, 1977). His other works include “The Chronology and the Geography of the Repression in Communist Romania: Census of the Concentration Camp Population 1945-1989”, and numerous writings on South East European countries’ history. He is the Vice-president of the “Civic Academy” Foundation. He also is the Director of the International Center of Studies on Communism.

Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan are co-founders of the “Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance”, which consists of the Sighet Museum and the International Center of Studies on Communism. They are also organizers of the annual Sighet Summer School, whose dean is Stéphane Courtois, Director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). The Memorial is one of the EU recognized South East European institutions promoting awareness and remembrance of communist crimes, for a better understanding of Europe's sharedhistory.