Radu Vancu Joins PEN World Voices 2025: A Romanian Voice for Truth and Beauty
At the beginning of May, as the literary world descends on New York City for the 2025 edition of PEN World Voices, a forceful voice from Eastern Europe will ring out among the crowd. Radu Vancu, one of Romania’s most compelling contemporary poets, prose writers, diarists, essayists, and public intellectuals, is set to join the prestigious festival, bringing with him a body of work that is as metamorphic and rich as it is politically urgent.
If you’re not yet familiar with Vancu’s writing, prepare for an encounter with language that delights, burns, heals, and indicts. A leading figure in Romania’s post-communist literary scene, Vancu’s literature is haunted by personal loss and collective memory, while his essays and public commentary remain steadfast in their advocacy for democracy, human rights, and the moral responsibility of the writer.
At PEN World Voices, Radu Vancu will participate in a paneldedicated to the art of dialogue in contemporary poetry. In a conversation with acclaimed poet Dunya Mikhail (Tablets: Secrets of the Clay), moderated by poet and translator Nancy Naomi Carlson, the Romanian author will explore how poetry opens up spaces of exchange—between writers, cultures, languages, and forms. The event, supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, will take place at AIA Center for Architecture – Tafel Hall on May 2 (8 pm).
Expect extensive knowledge, sharp insight and searing truths wrapped in an elegant, seductive, image-filled discourse. Vancu’s participation at PEN Voices 2025 is especially timely: as the region grapples anew with political turbulence and uncertainty, he stands as a literary voice of conscience, unafraid to confront both the past and the present.
Best known in the English-speaking world for his translated poems and interviews published in anthologies like New European Poets (Graywolf Press) and top magazines such as Kenyon Review, Plume Poetry, Poetry International, Asymptote Journal, Poetry Daily and Words Without Borders, Vancu’s writing manages to be both profoundly Romanian and startlingly universal. Whether you’re a seasoned Eastern European literature aficionado or just discovering the global literary scene, his presence at PEN World Voices is a rare chance to witness a writer who does not simply describe the world but aspires to reshape it.
Radu Vancu (b. Sibiu, Romania, 1978) is a Romanian poet, novelist, scholar, and translator. Between 2019 and 2023, he has served as President of PEN Romania. He works as a Professor at the Faculty of Letters and Arts at the “Lucian Blaga” University from Sibiu. He is editor-in-chief of the Transilvania magazine – and also an editor of the Poesis International magazine. He was the national editor of the Romanian section for the Poetry International website. Starting with 2002, he has published nine books of poems, for which he was awarded several prizes, both national and international; his poetry was translated in circa 20 languages, either in anthologies/magazines or as individual books. He has also published two novels, Transparency(2018) and Paradise (2025), and three volumes of his diary (2017, 2021, 2024), which were awarded several prizes. He has also published two children novellas and a book collecting his social & political articles. His scholarly publications include two book-length essays on Mihai Eminescu and Mircea Ivănescu, as well as a book on the anti-humanist poetics of modernity. He has coordinated several anthologies of modern and contemporary Romanian poetry, either alone or in collaboration with Mircea Ivănescu, Claudiu Komartin, or Marius Chivu. He has translated novels and poetry, mainly from the works of Walt Whitman and John Berryman; he is also the translator of the on-going four-volume Ezra Pound edition coordinated by H.-R Patapievici. He is the President of the International Poetry Festival in Sibiu “Poets in Transylvania” (2013- ongoing).
PEN World Voices Festival 2025 runs from April 30 through May 5, featuring more than 100 writers from 35 countries. For tickets & the full program, visit
https://worldvoices.pen.org
.
For more Romanian content, don’t miss Translation on the Line: Censorship, Power, and the Politics of Language, featuring translators Michael Eskin, Sawad Hussain, and Monica Cure alongside award-winning translator and event moderator Sandra Smith (LA MAMA Shares, May 3, 12:30 pm).