ANDREI CODRESCU, born in Romania, an immigrant to the U.S, is an American novelist, essayist, poet and film maker. Honored by the Carnegie Foundation with The Heritage Award, he has won a Peabody Award for his film "Road Scholar," is the winner of two Pushcart Prizes, was recipient of the Ovid Prize, was long-listed for the National Book Award in poetry, and has received praise for his poetry and fiction from Kay Boyle, Alicia Ostriker, Anselm Hollo, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, E.M. Cioran, Mary Carr, Jim Harrison, Tom Robbins, Ariel Dorfman, William Burroughs, Mircea Cartarescu, Elizabeth McCracken, Spalding Grey and Jonathan Raban. The New York Times Book Review called Codrescu "One of our most talented and magical writers," who "manages to be brilliant and insightful, tough and seductive about American culture." He founded "Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Books & Ideas" (1983-2016), has been a senior commentator for NPR's "All Things Considered" (1983-2016) and is MacCurdy Distinguished Professor Emeritus at LSU, Baton Rouge. Among many other books, Codrescu has published four novels, three of them with Simon & Schuster, and one with Algonquin. His most recent publications are three book-length philosophical essays published by Princeton University Press. He lives in Brooklyn
"Not every writer is lucky enough to have grown up in a hell. Andrei Codrescu is one of the lucky ones. He can boast that he has suffered under the rule of a first-class tyrant. . . .What I particularly like about Codrescu is that he has not forgotten his first anguishes, still less his unanswered questions.” - E.M. Cioran
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Fish Have No Psychiatrists: a day with Andrei Codrescu – a film by Julian Semilian
interview | animation | testimonial | poetry | happenings
Julian Semilian’s documentary-collage centers around the life and times of poet, novelist, public speaker, and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu. From Dada to quadrupedalism, this ode to free-thinking and free-wheeling.is a playful paean that counters all forms of functional fixedness
Julian and Andrei met in Italy in 1966 as both fled post WWII Romania – they actually arrived together in the US. If you get them together and give them a drink – they’ll regale you with stories of jumping from bridges, seductions by princesses and appearing in Pasolini films! It’s a pleasure to watch these two avant-savants meld on screen
Experimental filmmaker Julian Semilian is a film editor, teacher, poet, translator, and novelist. What he won’t tell you is that he learned his art from Bernie Gribble, legendary editor on a number midcentury films, including Death Wish. Julian is a very modest, fantastic director, producer, translator, and a well-loved professor of film. Learn more here
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival & The River Run Film Festival 2024 – limited release 4.20.2024 – European Premiere 10.15.2024
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WFDD Interview with Julian 4.18.204 | UNC School for the Arts 2022
Latest Book: A Possible Epic of Care: A Collaborative Poem Between Andrei Codrescu and Vincent Katz
Andrei on his collaboration between himself and Vincent Katz: ‘Our common bonds at that curious time of the planet-engulfing Plague were various: we were friends, we were poets, we took poetry seriously enough to believe in its superpowers, but above all, we both had mothers who at ages past ninety needed the care and attention that we could provide them.
Our exchanges quickly became an ongoing epic of care. It became also a store of reminiscences, activities and ideas that paid homage to the women we cared for—communiqués and confessions that we would have liked them to appreciate
Black Widow Press – October 17 2023
Award: The International Fusion Museum’s Kafka Prize
In recognition of Codrescu's literary excellence, his public passion and defense of the arts, and his work in publishing, radio and television…residencies in Stare Mesto–Prague 1 & Hostka the Czecch Republic. 2023–2024
Recent Book: Too Late for Nightmares
One hundred pages of cri-de-coeur poems written while washing vegetables and hands in the dark panic days of 2020-2022 in order to repel the horrors of Covid politics of those stolen years. Intended as spells these works are meant to heal
Black Widow Press – Sept 2022
“My only job is to think." Me too, and I think you might be a cross between a secular WH Auden only with a sense of humor, and Frank O'Hara only straight. Or you are a fast train giving off sparks when you round corners, and the track is all corners. Anyway, I really love this book and am dog-earing it compulsively. Not only the poems about poetry, but things like "the weather is nice" and "Walk on all fours" and "still hunting" make me breathless with adoration, as Wordsworth says. All that anger in the same bed as all that fun. Alicia Ostriker 11.29 2022 on "Too Late for Nightmares"
"With humor and grace, wisdom and tenderness, Codrescu transforms the commonplace into the miraculous. His work is cause for celebration" – Kay Boyle
"Andrei Codrescu lives and writes at the edge of his imagination. He is a poet of hope and political defiance, of exaltation and exuberance" – Walter Bargen
“Grab any dozen adjectives, and they’ll probably describe Andrei Codrescu: dazzling, funny, generous, warm, principled, loyal, dangerous, flaneur, Mr Present… It’s amazing how little ennui he’s capable of” – Elinor Nauen
