Historian, Theatre Artist, Poet
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Green Horses on the Walls
[Cai verzi pe pereți]
poetry collection from Finishing Line Press
2021 Independent Press Book Award Winner
2021 Human Relations Indie Book Award Winner
2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist
2021 Colorado Authors League Book Award Finalist
“Nothing prepared me for island life,” Cristina A. Bejan notes in a memorable poem of exile. The island of poetry has always been with her, a physical and spiritual island composed of people she loves or not, the dailiness of a lived and detailed life in her country of origin, the languages that express them. These poems infuse the English language with the pleasures of a world I loved surrendering to. She is a poet through and through, born that way, and generously ours now.
Andrei Codrescu, author of No Time like Now: New Poems (Pitt Poetry Series, 2019)
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 four universities (including Duke) and Wake Technical Community College. She currently teaches history and theatre 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 organization Bucharest Inside the Beltway (BiB). Under her 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, the Dramatists Guild of America and the BETC Writers Group. In 2022 her plays have appeared in the Colorado Women's Theatre Festival and the Peace for Ukraine Festival at Baron's Court Theatre, London, UK.
Books
USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Vol. 3 (contributing author)
Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania
The Criterion Association
Green Horses on the Walls
poetry collection
Press & Contact
Recent interviews with Cristina A. Bejan:
"Cristina A. Bejan: „Sunt o activistă și o războinică a justiției sociale,” (Interview by Daciana Branea) Orizonturi Culturale Italo-Române, May 5, 2022.
"Visibility and Justice: Cristina A. Bejan Interviewed by Adela Sinclair," BOMB Magazine, April 21, 2022.
"Local efforts for Ukraine," Met Media, Metropolitan State University of Denver, April 12, 2022
"Following Your Intellectual and Creative Passions with Cristina A. Bejan '04," Northwestern Intersections Podcast Ep. 111
"University experts weigh in on Ukraine," Met Media, The Student Voice of MSU Denver, March 23, 2022
"Russian Invasion Tests the International World Order," RED official newsroom, Metropolitan State University of Denver
"An award-winning poet's Roadrunner journey" - Early Bird newsletter, Metropolitan State University of Denver
"Cristina Bejan Named an Indie Finalist for Green Horses on the Walls"- Interview for Denver Westword, June, 25, 2021
Interview by Maria-Cristina Necula, Woman Around Town, May 17, 2021
Interview by Aura Martin, auramartin.weebly.com, May 15, 2021R
Recent book reviews - all book reviews available on Academia.edu
Book Review of "Green Horses on the Walls" by Ileana D. Weissz
Book Review of "Green Horses on the Walls" in Observator Cultural by Letitia Guran (in Romanian)
Book Review of "Green Horses on the Walls" in Cloud Lake Literary journal by Irina Moga
Book Review of "Green Horses on the Walls" in KIRKUS Reviews
Book Review of "Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania" in Hungarian Historical Review by Valentin Săndulescu
Book Review of "Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania" in Slavic Review by Radu Harald Dinu
Recent articles, poems & play by Cristina A. Bejan:
"Disability as Invisible Illness - The Last Frontier," ARCHER Coalition Blog, May 11, 2021
"I'm from a Tricky Diaspora" 2 poems on migrant identity by Cristina A. Bejan, The Calvert Journal, September 10, 2021.
"J'y suis, j'y reste / Here I am, here I stay," play published in anthology Voices on the Move, edited by Domnica Radulescu & Roxana Cazan, Solis Press, 2020.
"Poeme: Invitatul special - Cai verzi pe pereți & București," OPT Motive (Bucharest), nr. 57, March 29, 2021.