Please join the Harriman Institute for an evening with Writer in Residence Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu, in conversation with his translator Sean Cotter, and Harriman Director Valentina Izmirlieva.
Mircea Cărtărescu, awarded the Dublin Literary Award (2024) for his novel Solenoid, has won over 20 international prizes, including The Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2023), The FIL Prize (2022), The Thomas Mann Prize (2018), The Austrian State Prize (2015), The Mondello Prize (2024), and the Formentor Prize (2018). He is a poet, novelist, literary critic, journalist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bucharest, member of the Romanian Writers’ Union, Romanian PEN and the European Cultural Parliament. He has published over 40 books and a large number of articles. Cărtărescu’s work has been translated into over 25 languages. He is Doctor Honoris Causa of the universities of Constanța, Bacău, Cluj, Timișoara, of the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, and the International University Menendez Pelayo in Santander, Spain.
Professor of Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Sean Cotter is the translator of many works of Romanian literature, including FEM by Magda Cârneci (Deep Vellum, 2021) and Wheel with a Single Spoke by Nichita Stănescu (Archipelago Books, 2012). His most recent work, Mircea Cărtărescu’s Solenoid (Deep Vellum, 2022), received the Dublin Literary Award. His monograph, Literary Translation and the Idea of a Minor Romania (Univ. Rochester Press, 2014, winner of the Society of Romanian Studies book prize), will appear in 2024 in Romanian translation with Editura Humanitas.
Valentina Izmirlieva is Professor in Columbia’s Slavic Department and Director of the Harriman Institute. She is a scholar of Balkan and East Slavic religious and political cultures, with a focus on multi-ethnic and multi-religious empires and their successor states. The topics of her publications range from the medieval societies of the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, including Kyivan Rus’, to the post-Soviet cultural space. The recipient of many awards and distinctions, Professor Izmirlieva delivered the inaugural Memorial Shevelov Lecture of Ukrainian Studies in 2018. She founded and leads Black Sea Networks, a global initiative to investigate the Black Sea as a hub of cultural, political, and historical interest.
