Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet, copywriter, editor, and translator who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have been published widely in journals and anthologies, including Field, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Gravel, The Malahat Review, The Puritan, Brooklyn Rail/InTranslation, Asymptote, carte blanche, Going Down Swinging, Oxford Poetry, The Lake, Ambit, Banshee Lit, among others.
Serea is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Joanne Scott Kennedy Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia, the New Letters Readers Award, the Franklin-Christoph Merit Award, and several other prizes, honorable mentions, and short-lists for her poems and books. Her poems have been translated in Russian, French, Italian, Arabic, and Farsi, and have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac.
Serea’s most recent books are In Those Years, No One Slept (Broadstone Books, 2023) and Writing on the Walls at Night (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Her collection of selected poems translated into Arabic, Tonight I’ll Become a Lake into which You’ll Sink, was published in Egypt in 2021. Serea’s other full-length poetry collections include Twoxism (8th House Publishing, Canada, 2018), a poetry-photography collaboration with visual artist Maria Haro; Nothing Important Happened Today (Broadstone Books, 2016); To Part Is to Die a Little (Cervená Barva Press, 2015); A Dirt Road Hangs from the Sky (8th House Publishing, Canada, 2013); and Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, Canada, 2012). She also has published the chapbooks The Russian Hat (White Knuckles Press, 2014), The System (Cold Hub Press, New Zealand, 2012), With the Strike of a Match (White Knuckles Press, 2011), and Eternity’s Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She also co-edited Shattered: Artists inspired by Artists (New Meridian Arts, 2024), an ekphrastic poetry collection protesting the war in Ukraine, and a collaboration with Romanian-Canadian visual artist Oana Maria Cajal.
Serea is a founding editor of National Translation Month, a celebration of literary translations each September. Together with Paul Doru Mugur and Adam J. Sorkin, Serea co-edited and co-translated The Vanishing Point That Whistles, an Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (Talisman House Publishing, 2011). She also translated Adina Dabija’s Beautybeast (Northshore Press, 2012) and Iulia Militaru’s The Seizure of the Beast. A Post-research (Guernica Editions, 2023).
Serea’s poem In Those Years, No One Slept was set to music for choir by composer Richard Campbell and the piece won the top prize at The Uncommon Music Festival Competition in Sitka, Alaska, in August 2018. Since then, the piece was performed by choirs in several states, most notably at an event at the Pullo Center in York, PA, commemorating 100 years since the end of WWI.
Serea’s poem-photo collaboration Twoxism with photographer Maria Haro started in 2015 and was active until 2023. 33 poem-photo selections were featured in an art exhibition that opened in New York City in April 2017. Other collaborations include The Statue of Liberty Goes Home to Brooklyn, with visual artist Mike Markham and collaborations with several filmmakers who created 7 videopoems based on her poems.
In 2015, Claudia Serea was featured in the documentary Poetry of Witness alongside Carolyn Forché, Bruce Weigl, Duncan Wu, and others. The Economist featured an interview with Claudia Serea on its culture blog Prospero.
Claudia Serea serves on the board of The Red Wheelbarrow Poets and is one of the curators of the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Readings. She writes, translates, and edits manuscripts in Rutherford, New Jersey. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @Claudia_poetry.
