Biography

Magda Carneci is a poet, essayist and translator born in Romania. She took a Ph.D. in art history at EHESS in Paris (1997) and received several international grants in literature and art history (Fulbrigt, Soros, Getty, European Community, a.o).
Member of the well-known “generation of the ‘80s” in Romanian literature, of which she was one of the theoriticians, after the December Revolution of 1989 she became actively involved in the political and cultural Romanian scene of the 1990s. After working as a visiting lecturer at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris, at present she is the director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris.

She published several volumes of poetry in Romanian, but also Psaume (in French, 1997), Chaosmos (in Dutch, Amsterdam: Go-Bos Press, 2004), Chaosmos (in English, White Pine Press, USA, 2006), and Trois saisons poétiques (Three Poetical Seasons, Luxembourg: PHI, 2008). She also published several books of essays on modern and contemporary art, among which Art of the 1980s in Eastern Europe. Texts on Postmodernisme (in English, Bucharest : Paralela 45, 1999).

She is present in many anthologies of contemporary Romanian poetry and her poems were translated into 13 languages. In English, her poems were published in literary magazines such as Poetry Review, Visions International, Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Ireland Review, The Greensboro Review, The West Wind Review, Ossiris, The Southern Californian Anthology.

She published short stories in French in the books Paris par écrits (Paris, L’Inventaire, 2002) and Le Sacré aujourd’hui (Paris, Editions du Rocher, 2003). She was also the co-editor of the book Perspectives roumaines. Du postmodernisme à l’intégration européenne (Romanian Perspectives. From Postcommunism to European Integration, Paris : L’Harmattan, 2004). Her Ph.D. thesis was published under the title Art et pouvoir en Roumanie 1945-1989 (Art and Power in Romania 1945-1989, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007).

Member of the European Cultural Parliament, she is often invited to international symposiums and debates about Central Europe and European culture.

References:
* Rob Pope: Creativity: History, Theory, Practice, London: Routledge, 2005; pp.231, 269-70.
* Fiona Sampson, "For the deaf war they're waging: Contemporary Romanian and Bessarabian Poetry", Poetry Review, vol.93, no.3, Autumn 2003, pp.51-59 :
“This generation’s undoubted leader is now the art historian Magda Carneci, who works in Paris and whose latest work is strongly influenced by French philosophy.”
* Robert Murray Davis, “Romanian Writing Redivivus”; World Literature Today, spring 2002, pp.76-83.