Cristina A. Bejan

Poet, Spoken Word Artist

Denver, CO
Colorado US
Twitter/X: 

Author's Bio

CRISTINA A. BEJAN is an award-winning Romanian-American historian, theatre artist and spoken word poet living and creating in Denver, Colorado. She grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and received her BA in Philosophy (Honors) from Northwestern University, where she also studied theatre. An Oxford DPhil and a recipient of the (Rhodes) Scholarship and a Fulbright, she has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University, and the (Woodrow Wilson) Center, and has taught history at five institutions of higher education, including Duke University. She currently teaches history at Metropolitan State University of Denver where she was selected as a Finalist for the 2021 Faculty Senate Teaching Award. A playwright, Bejan has written nineteen plays, many of which have been produced in the United States, Romania, the United Kingdom and Vanuatu. She writes creatively in five languages and has been published internationally in every genre she writes in: academic, theatrical, and poetry. She is founding executive director of the arts and culture collective Bucharest Inside the Beltway. Under the stage name “Lady Godiva,” she performs her poetry across the United States and Romania. She has written "Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and "Green Horses on the Walls" (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and is also a contributing author for "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Vol. 3" (University of Indiana, 2018). She has appeared on C-SPAN, and her work has been featured in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, American Prospect, Evenimentul Zilei and Observator Cultural. Bejan is on the Board of Directors for Immigrant Research Forum (Washington DC) and ARCHER (the American Romanian Coalition for Human and Equal Rights, Chicago, for which she serves as Vice President), and the Advisory Board of Alianța (Washington DC). She is an advocate for NAMI and RAINN and volunteers for Colorado's Romanian philanthropy organization RAFA (the Romanian-American Freedom Alliance). She is a proud member of the Colorado Authors League, the International Center for Women Playwrights, and the Dramatists Guild of America.

Publications & Prizes

Poetry

Chapbook:
Green Horses on the Walls (Finishing Line Press, 2020)
Journals: ,
Calvert Journal
,
Red Fern Review
,
The Polyglot

Spoken Word

Performances:
Romanian Cultural Institute New York (2022) (2022)
,
Community Cypher Open Mic (2021)
,
Denver S Broadway Cafe (owned by Doniece & Dena Derani) (2020)
,
International Poetry Circle (2020)
,
Mărțișor and International Women’s Day (2020)
,
New American Arts Festival (2020)
,
Romanian Women Voices of North America (2020)
Prizes won: 

Cristina A. Bejan, Green Horses on the Walls (Finishing Line Press, 2019) has been selected as: 2021 Independent Press Book Award Winner | 2021 Human Relations Indie Book Award Gold Winner (Historical), Silver Winner (Reflection), Silver Winner (Realistic Poetry), and Honorable Mention (Personal Challenge Poetry) | Finalist 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist (Women's Issues) | Finalist 2021 Colorado Authors League Book Award (Cover Design).

Personal Favorites

Favorite authors: 
Magda Cârneci, Norman Manea, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Nina Cassian, Ana Blandiana, Andrei Codrescu, Domnica Radulescu, Saviana Stanescu, Mihail Sebastian, Amanda L. Andrei, Susan Sontag

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Identifies as: 
American, Romanian
Prefers to work with: 
Any
Fluent in: 
English, French, German, Romanian
Raised in: 
Durham, NC
North Carolina
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: Oct 25, 2022