ARMEN-FRANCESCA BANCIU

CARMEN-FRANCESCA BANCIU (born in 1955, Lipova, Romania) is a German and Romanian novelist and poet who occasionally writes in English and Romanian. After receiving the International Short Story Prize of the City of Arnsberg for her story The Radiant Ghetto (1985), she was banned from publishing her works in what was then communist Romania. In 1991, she accepted the DAAD’s Berlin Artists’ Program invitation and moved to Germany.

Carmen-Francesca was writer-in-residence at Rutgers University (US) from 2004 to 2005 and at the University of Bath (UK) in 2009. She currently lives in Berlin and works as a freelance author. Her books explore the author’s geographical, psychological, and linguistic migrations in Europe during and after the fall of communism. Her main character, Maria-Maria, evolves throughout the books, freeing herself from the chains of the past and stepping out of the victim role to shape her own destiny. The themes of reconciliation, peace, and forgiveness are essential and represent a constant concern in her books.

She was awarded numerous grants and prizes. Her works have been translated into several languages. Her novel in verse, Farewell, Dear Comrades and Lovers!, was longlisted for the German Book Prize 2018.

Latest books: Ein Land voller Helden (novel, PalmArtPress, Berlin, 2019)/ O Țară plină de eroi (TracusArte, 2019), Vaterflucht/ Fleeing Father (novel, PalmArtPress, Berlin, 2021), Ilsebill salzt nach (novel, PalmArtPress, Berlin, 2023). In the fall of 2024, the revised and expanded edition of the novel Mutters Tag Das Lied der traurigen Mutter/ Mother’s Day Song of a Sad Mother, part of the Trilogy of the Optimists, will be published by the German and English language publisher PalmArtPress, Berlin.