About Cristina A. Bejan Author / Artist
Born in Colorado at the height of the Cold War, CRISTINA A. BEJAN is a dual Romanian & USA citizen as well as a 4th generation Denverite. Bejan is an award-winning, multilingual Romanian-American historian, theatre artist and spoken word poet living and creating in Denver, Colorado. 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 serves as a Guest Lecturer for the Foreign Service Institute and the Romanian-American University (Bucharest). After teaching history and theatre at Metropolitan State University of Denver for four years, Bejan has joined the University of Denver.
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 platform Bucharest Inside the Beltway (BiB). Under her stage name “Lady Godiva,” she performs her poetry across the United States & Romania.
She has written the history book "Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), poetry collection "Green Horses on the Walls" (Finishing Line Press, 2020), play anthology "FINALLY QUIET: Four Plays from Bucharest to Washington DC" (No Passport Press, 2023), her play about post-Holocaust "Buchenwald" (Next Stage Press, 2023) and is also a contributing author (64 articles and coauthor of the African introduction) for "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933 - 1945, Vol. 3" (University of Indiana, 2018).
Bejan's history and poetry books have been released in Romanian translation with Editura Litera and Editura Tracus Arte. Please check out Books More Info for details on all her books with information about how to order directly from Bejan. She has appeared on C-SPAN and three different Romanian national/international TV news channels, as well as Romanian local, national, and international radio. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, American Prospect, Libertatea, 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).
As a recipient of merit-based academic scholarships, Bejan is passionate about access to education. She is an advocate for The Alex Fund, a non-profit that works to make education available to every disadvantaged child in Romania. As a survivor, Bejan is an activist for NAMI and RAINN. A proud member of PEN America, Colorado Authors League, Poetry Society of Colorado, International Center for Women Playwrights, Dramatists Guild of America, and Poetry Society of America, Bejan is currently writing a book about the unknown history of the Holocaust, a collection of poems and essays titled "And the caravan rolls on," and two plays. Please visit Bejan's Photo Gallery, Videos, and Podcast & Radio for more about her creative life.
FINALLY QUIET: Four Plays from Bucharest to Washington DC
FINALLY QUIET Four Plays from Bucharest to Washington, DC by Cristina A. Bejan. This volume collects four spirited, imaginative and provocative plays from Romanian-American dramatist Cristina A. Bejan. The plays are: TO THOSE WHO HAVEN'T STOPPED THINKING, DISTRICTLAND, FINALLY QUIET IN MY MIND and LIFE ACCORDING TO SWAMI SHIVA.
From a dystopian investigation of the impact of totalitarianism, an absurd satire about American ambition, a cry for mental health awareness, and a timely critique of Putin's Russia, Bejan's plays span the world and ultimately capture the universal beating of the human heart. Published March 19, 2023, No Passport Press. Book cover art by E. Christopher Clark.
"Bejan's distinctive voice flows strongly through this anthology of plays bringing brutal honesty to worlds with characters who are vulnerable, cruel, ambitious, and fully human ... In the world of theatre where the woman's voice is often missing, Bejan lifting hers is a gift."
- Susan Lyles, Founder and Producing Artistic Director, And Toto too Theatre Company
"Bejan's plays invite us to listen closely, then ask us to reflect on the freedoms we so often take for granted. From beyond the universe to the neighborhoods of Washington DC, she calls attention to the absurd nature of our artificial social structures and the rarity of true connections with other people."
- Heather Beasley, Associate Artistic Director, Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado (formerly Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company)
"Bejan's elegant plays circle around the difficult quest for belonging that is at one and the same time tied to a specific time and place and timeless and universal."
- Blair Ruble, Distinguished Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center, and author of Washington's U Street: A Biography
Recent book reviews - all book reviews available on Academia.edu
