Internationally Acclaimed Writer and Bard College Professor Norman Manea Joins Prestigious Royal Society of Literature

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) of Great Britain has invited renowned Romanian émigré author and Bard College writer in residence Norman Manea to become a Fellow of RSL. The Royal Society of Literature was founded by King George IV in 1820, to “reward literary merit and excite literary talent.” Among its Fellows are the Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass, Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing, and V. S. Naipaul, as well as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, John Banville, Umberto Eco, Kazuo Ishiguro, and George Steiner. Manea is the first Romanian writer to be honored by the prestigious British institution. 



Manea, Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture, has been a member of the Bard faculty since 1989 and is the author of 22 volumes of fiction and essays. Among numerous honors, he has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Literary Lion Medal by the State Library of New York, has been awarded Italy’s International Nonino Prize for Literature, and been elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Art. His memoir The Hooligan’s Return received France’s Prix Médicis Étranger in 2006. In 2007, he was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the President of Romania and in 2008 received honorary degrees in literature from the University of Bucharest and Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. In 2009, the French Ministry of Culture conferred the most prestigious title of Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on him. His work has been translated into 20 languages.

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(9.09.11)

This event was last updated on 09-14-2011

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