Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu (1979) is an accomplished writer and editor with over 20 years of experience in foreign fiction. From 2005 to 2020, he served as the editorial director at Polirom Publishing House, where he was instrumental in publishing notable authors such as Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Vladimir Nabokov, and Ernest Hemingway. Currently, he is the editorial director for the Anansi World Fiction imprint within the Trei Publishing group, publishing authors such as Annie Ernaux, Jon Fosse, Louise Glück, Douglas Stewart, Roberto Bolaño, Hwang Sok-yong, Burhan Sönmez, Martin Amis and Paul Auster.
Stănescu is also a prolific essayist, regularly contributing to Dilema Veche and Observatorul Cultural magazines. He debuted as an author in 2010 with an epistolary book of essays, Ceea ce ne desparte. Epistolarul de la Hanul lui Manuc (What Separates Us), which engages in a literary dialogue contrasting Russian and Anglo-Saxon literature. His 2012 poetry collection, După bătălie ne-am tras sufletul (After the Battle We Stopped to Catch Our Breath), was shortlisted for the Observatorul Cultural National Prize and the Radio România Cultural Prize.
In 2013, he published Enter Ghost: Imaginary Letters to Osip Mandelștam, a homage to close-reading and literary imagination, followed by his second poetry collection, Anabasis, in 2014. Stănescu ventured into fiction with his debut novel, The Childhood of Kaspar Hauser (2017), a coming-of-age story set during the final years of the Ceaușescu regime, which garnered several prestigious awards, including the Thoreau Nephew National Prize and was shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature in 2018. This work has been translated into multiple languages.
His subsequent works include the biographical novel The Lost Letter (2019) about renowned Romanian playwright I.L. Caragiale, and Adorabilii etrusci (Those Adorable Etruscans) (2020), which won the George Cosbuc National Prize for Poetry. In 2022, he released Abraxas, celebrated with awards such as the Observator Cultural Prize for Fiction, Ziarul de Iași Prize for Fiction and the Romanian Academy Prize for Literature, with translation rights sold in several countries. His latest novel, released in 2024, The Black Sun, is the closure of what the author calls “the trilogy of memory and family” (together with The Childhood of Kaspar Hauser and Abraxas.)
Stănescu is also a skilled translator, having translated works by notable authors including Tennessee Williams, James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Philip Roth. He holds a PhD in literature.