About Domnica Radulescu

Domnica Radulescu is the Edwin A. Morris Professor of Comparative Literature at Washington and Lee University.


She is the author of three nationally and internationally acclaimed novels: Country of Red Azaleas (Twelve Hackett Book Group 2016), Black Sea Twilight (Doubleday 2010 & 2011) and Train to Trieste (Knopf 2008 & 2009). Train to Trieste has been published in twelve languages and is the winner of the 2009 Library of Virginia Fiction Award. Her play The Town with Very Nice People: A Strident Operetta has been chosen as a runner up for the 2013 Jane Chambers Playwriting award given by the Association for Theater in Higher Education. Her play Naturalized Woman was produced at the Thespis Theater Festival in New York City in 2012. She has authored, edited and co-edited several scholarly books on theater, exile and representations of women and received the 2011 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. She is also a Fulbright scholar and is presently working on her fourth novel titled My Father’s Orchards and on two new plays, titled House in a Boat and Crack in the Wall.

Domnica Radulescu has received a Fulbright Research Teaching Fellowship to study and teach at the University of Bucharest, Romania, for the 2017 fall term. Radulescu, who had a Fulbright to Romania 10 years ago, plans to complete the research and writing of her fourth novel, “My Father’s Orchards”, which takes place in Romania during World War II.


I’m inspired by my father’s story and his life in Romania during and after the war,” said Radulescu. “Romania has an interesting history in that it first sided with Nazi Germany and later became part of the Allies when the Russians invaded. He came of age during that time and the subsequent communist takeover, and I’ve always been fascinated by his experience. I’m also going to be doing some emotionally difficult research looking into the files of the secret police, which are now available. Like my other novels, this one will examine themes of political upheaval, love and trauma with a new element, that of the paranormal. Romania has a rich folkloric history, and since it is my heritage, it will be interesting to explore.

Winnie in the Attic or My Never Ending Love Affair with Feminist Theater

Domnica Radulescu tells the story of how theater saved her life in the early 1980s, during her last years in my native Romania, then a brutal dictatorship. How it lifted her above the oppressive grayness filled with terror and myriads material and spiritual deprivations and it gave her a sense of purpose and even joy.


This story has now been published on the blog of The International Centre for Women Playwrights, follow the link below:


Playwrights

Ménage À Trois: My Remarkable Odyssey From Former Communist-Ruled Romania To The US

Domnica Radulescu writes about her memoir 'Dream in a Suitcase', the book she once swore she would never write but in the end, it was the book itself that demanded to be written, for 'YourTango'.


your tango

Dream in a Suitcase, With Domnica Radalescu : Releasing Trauma; a Survivor's Podcast

With uncompromising irony, self-deprecating humor and unapologetic feminist rebelliousness that calls to mind Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Dream in a Suitcase is a powerful memoir that immerses readers in the mind of a woman who makes the bold but heartbreaking decision to leave behind her family and country to pursue the illusory American Dream. Domnica Radulescu speaks with Tracey Osborne for a Releasing Trauma podcast.


releasing trauma

The Table Review : Author Interview – Domnica Radulescu – Dream In A Suitcase

J J Barnes interviewed Domnica Radulescu about her life and the experiences that inspired her to write her memoir, Dream In A Suitcase, for 'The Table Review'. 'The Table Review' also carried a review of the same novel.


The Table Read

Welcome to America” is fragment from 'Dream in a Suitcase : A Story of My Immigrant Life'

A memorialistic chapter about the author’s arrival to america and her first months in Chicago in 1983, during the coldest winter of the century recently appeared in the European Journal of Life Writing and a link to the extract can be found below:


Suitcase extract

Radulescu will teach two courses, one on playwriting and performing trauma, and one on memoir, autobiography and writing about political trauma in the American Studies program at University of Bucharest. “It’s poignant for me because I will be teaching at the university in the same building where I went as a student before I escaped Ceausescu’s communist regime. I will have as a colleague one of my dearest former professors of English literature. I met her again 30-some years later at a conference, and she suggested I come on a Fulbright. Now, here I am, returning to a place that now is teaching my first and second novels in transnational literature courses. I’m following an intellectual and emotional arc in returning to my native city.”


While in Romania, Radulescu also plans to meet with theater directors who are interested in producing a few of her plays. “Bucharest is such a theatrically and culturally vibrant city, with one of the largest summer theater festivals in the world”, she noted.


I’m excited to reconnect with my roots in the new, modern Romania”, said Radulescu. “Things have changed. It’s quite a different country from what it was. I’ve been going back relatively frequently for work and to visit family, but I’ve felt like a tourist in my own country. When you go and work in a professional setting it is a very different feeling. I always say you don’t belong to a place unless you work in it. You need to feel the rhythms of the city.

HOLA awards

At the HOLA awards for Outstanding Performance by Ensemble Cast for their performance in Exile is My Home

Domnica Radulescu
Interviewed by Shenandoah Magazine


The literary magazine Shenandoah was founded in 1950 by a group of Washington and Lee University faculty members and undergraduates. Like the university which sponsors it, Shenandoah strives to encourage imagination, precision, prudence, diversity and daring. Recently it published a featured interview with Domnica Radulescu, highlighting her experiences as a scholar and writer and offers a provoking insight into her masterful creations and understanding of multiple cultures.

  1. Shenandoah : How has the W&L student body changed since you arrived on campus in 1992?
    Domnica Radulescu : It has diversified more in terms of racial, ethnic and economic status categories. Compared to other schools Washington and Lee still has to make some important strides toward authentic diversification at all levels, but compared to itself it has opened up quite a bit since I first arrived on campus.
  2. Shenandoah : Your novels have been set across Europe and in the United States; I often hear that settings should be used as characters, having certain traits the complement the goal of the work. What traits might you say your Eastern European settings have? How do they differ from some traits of an American setting?
    Domnica Radulescu : I try to imbue my European settings with a sense of history and the magic of what is generally known as the old world. I work at evoking settings in which nature and architecture complement each other, urban settings with touches of natural beauty as for instance a city street lined with fragrant linden trees and natural settings marked by the human touch and history as for instance a view of the brooding Carpathian Mountains with a medieval cathedral in the middle. The European settings are in my flesh and blood as I grew up among them. The American settings are always surprising and fascinating to me as I keep discovering them and trying to appropriate them as my own. Since the American settings are viewed through the eyes and experience of immigrants they are harsher and edgier and often presented with both a sense of distance and nostalgia for the lost spaces of the characters. Indeed often my settings are almost like characters in themselves and offer much more than the background for the unfolding of the action: they are interconnected with the life and the psychology of the characters, they offer refuge and are an intrinsic part of the action. For instance, the Carpathian Mountains offer refuge and consolation to the lovers in Train to Trieste as they are haunted by secret police and weighed down by an oppressive regime. The Black Sea becomes part of the action as the lovers in Black Sea Twilight rescue a French tourist from its tumultuous waves who in turn is going to have a crucial role in the unfolding of the plot. The creation of a specific sense of place is fundamental to the creation of my novels. Readers have often told me that they were transported to the spaces I was describing when reading my novels. I believe that means I am achieving at least one of the goals of my creative endeavors.
  3. Shenandoah : How do you combine your studies of comparative linguistics with Women’s and Gender studies? How are your studies reflected in your writing?
    Domnica Radulescu : There is a continuous and fluid dialogue between my scholarly endeavors and my fictional work. For instance, in terms of comparative linguistics, my novels and plays display a wide range of linguistic registers from poetic to humorous to realistic to dreamy and they often play with language as well as integrate words and expressions from other languages. In terms of my experience with women’s and gender studies, my fictional works all portray strong female protagonists that own their destinies, tell their own stories, and have strong and memorable voices. They also illustrate the wide range of the female experience in the world from coming into oneself as a young woman to professional fulfillment or struggle, to creativity, to motherhood, sexuality, birth, friendship and female solidarity, aging, grief, and above all a larger than life laugh at the tragicomedy that is life.
  4. Shenandoah : To what extent does your study of languages affect your English writing style?
    Domnica Radulescu : Quite significantly. I believe that because of my life long study and teaching of languages as well as due to the fact I write most of my fictional works in English, which is not my native language, I have a particular sensitivity to the nuances of words, to the sounds, rhythm and music in language, to the ironies or poetry hidden in various combinations of words, to the great potential of language to transport us to mysterious worlds, to bring us to heights of joy or depths of sadness, or to incite us to action. I believe that because I am an outsider to the English language I have the irreverent courage to play with the English language in ways that maybe native speakers would not have the willingness to do. I also often try to bring into my fiction the flavor of some of the other languages I speak and love: some of the earthiness and humor of my native language Romanian, some of the sexy lyricism of French, some of the delicious melodiousness of Italian. The English language is a generous language that has great potential and powers and is a Protean language with great potential for transformation and playfulness.
  5. Shenandoah : Can you outline several differences in your process in writing a play as opposed to a novel?
    Domnica Radulescu : For me, writing a novel is like building a house: you have to create a foundation, walls and structures that hold it together, windows that are open onto the world and make sure that all the parts are interconnected so that the house doesn’t fall down. Characters, plot development, details of place, time, atmosphere, geography, psychology, philosophical ideas all have to be tied in an architecture that makes sense and is cohesive as is aesthetically engaging. Sometimes it is agonizing and despairing, and things do crumble and then you have to go back and rebuild parts, dismantle others, until it all holds in a seamless yet delicate balance. Writing a play for me is, on the contrary like playing with blocks, it is very much the opposite of writing a novel: playful, light even when the themes or ideas may be difficult or the characters poised on the line between the tragic and the comic, and it gives me a great sense of creative freedom. I can make the most outrageous structures with my colored blocks which are words and images. The fact that I can allow the characters to talk in their own voices, act and play often in wildly contrasting ways, confront one another or reflect one another gives me the sense of a magical world that has a life of its own.
  6. Shenandoah : Having described some of those differences, is there a genre that you prefer, or does your choice depend on subject matter? Or on something else?
    Domnica Radulescu : I like each of them equally but in different ways. I am basically a story teller, and I love telling a good story and building a beautiful house for it. The narrative genre gives me the sense of great power. James Joyce said that the narrator is “like God in creation.” There is something true about that and the sense of a certain omnipotence of creating a cohesive and functioning world is exhilarating. On the other hand, I have worked in the theater for my entire adult life, either as actor, director, teacher or scholar of theater and I believe I have a sense of timing, voice, contrast and tension which is at the core of theater. I feel great freedom in the writing of a play as I give voice to a wide array of points of view and personalities. I feel I can experiment and there is no limit to how far I can take my imagination in the creation of a play. In writing a novel I feel I have to perform a balancing act between delving inside my creative imagination and reigning it in so that the story can shine through.
  7. Shenandoah : After having lived in the US for so long, do you identify with American culture? With Washington and Lee culture?
    Domnica Radulescu : I identify and appreciate many aspects of American culture as America is my home. I appreciate its sense of openness, wildness and freedom, its great human diversity, American humor and the puzzling balance between fierce individualism and the working of communities, its wide expanses of land, its music, and its highways. There are aspects of Washington and Lee culture that I identify with and others that I don’t. I appreciate some aspects of its developing artistic and intellectual culture, and its slowly growing counterculture, small as that may be. I do not identify with or appreciate the Greek culture, the masculinist culture or the cult of Robert E. Lee. The last one in particular is very alien and alienating to me. I do feel quite close to the students taken individually, and I appreciate the university’s many resources. I love the view of the town seen from the Colonnade at sunset.
  8. Shenandoah : Shenandoah has made a complete transition to an online format. How do you think that changes the way the published pieces are read and perceived?
    Domnica Radulescu : Just as anything else that is changing from paper format to electronic: something is to be gained and something is lost: that which is gained in accessibility and circulation is lost in the precious physicality of the paper object. Some people still think that electronic journals are less prestigious but more and more important publications have either moved to or started as electronic journal in the first place. In a way the electronic format offers more freedom in layout, illustrations and its success depends how the journal is being publicized and connected to various sources online. I personally find it sort of fun and really convenient to read journals online while I still love holding a real book in my hands.
  9. Shenandoah : You’ve incorporated both autobiographical and fictional elements into your works; how do you avoid injecting too much of yourself into the characters? How do you ensure they are separate entities rather than reflections of yourself?
    Domnica Radulescu : I don’t really and I don’t worry about it. There is always an organic integration of my personal experiences with my imagination, research and other peoples’ stories into a holistic entity. To me art is an awakening or it leads to an awakening. In order for that awakening to happen it needs to emerge from the depths of the artist’s experience, soul, creative imagination and then the material or the story that emerges from those places needs to be transformed in the furnace of that imagination into a work that others can connect to, identify with or be moved by. Whether a work is autobiographical or not, or somewhat autobiographical and somewhat fictional, whether it is “a true story” or not, is irrelevant to me. What is relevant to me is that a reader who picks up one of my novels discovers something in it that she/he can connect with at a deep level, that she/he experiences that awakening and discovers something new about the world, the human condition and themselves. Then it is a true story.
  10. Shenandoah : If you had to choose one language in which to read, which would you choose?
    Domnica Radulescu : I wouldn’t. I don’t want to make that choice, because I love to read in many languages and discover the various universes of thought that are contained in those languages: French, English, Italian, Romanian, or Spanish. But if let’s say I was forced to choose only one language to read in I think it would be English. But I would really miss the other languages and probably translate in my mind into one of the other languages I love as I went on with the reading in English.

Shenandoah The magazine Shenandoah is the Washington and Lee University Review. It is funded and supported by Washington and Lee University. The magazine maintains a board of university advisors who offer guidance and advice, and the current editor conducts an intern program in which undergraduate students work for the journal and learn the craft of editing as an academic course in the English Department. Like the university which sponsors it, Shenandoah strives to encourage imagination, precision, prudence, diversity and daring.

Recent Appearances

Train to Trieste
Relaunch

"What a magical evening of the relaunch of the new edition of Train to Trieste/Trenul de Trieste at the beautiful bookstore Mihai Eminescu, Bucharest. And what a treat to have so many of my students there. The Train to Trieste keeps going and going."

24th January 2018

Looking for Home
at UNATC

Final show of the students in the American Studies Program, at the Universitatea Nationala de Arte Teatrale si Cinematografice. A selection of scenes from Caryl Churchill, Heather Raffo, Domnica Radulescu, Saviana Stnescu, Aglaja Veterayi and Matei Visniec, directed by Domnica Radulescu.

20th December 2018

The Town with
Very Nice People

"With the wonderful cast of the staged reading of my play The Town with Very Nice People at George Mason University. What a treat! Thank you all for your great work. A play that needs to come home to Lexington!" : Domnica Radulescu

13th April 2017

Exile Is My Home
at Washington and Lee university

Domnica, with the fantastic cast, director, music composer and light operator of Exile Is My Home at Washington and Lee university after the beautiful performance.

2nd April 2017

HOLA
Award Ceremony

The HOLA Award ceremony took place at the Flamboyán Theater, at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, in Lower Manhattan, NYC. Congratulations to our wonderful cast, Noemí de la Puente, Mario Golden, Vivienne Jurado, Mirandy Rodríguez, Nikaury Rodríguez and David van Leesten.

August 23rd 2016

Exile is My Home

"With the most amazing director in the galaxy - Andreas Robertz following the grand opening at Theater for the New City. Thank you Andreas for delivering my "baby" into the world in such a magnificent way, to Alexander for creating such haunting and stunning music and to Noemi de la Puente, Nikaury Rodriguez, Vivienne Jurado, Mirandy Rodriguez, Mario Golden, A.B. Lugo, David Leesten for incarnating my crazy characters with such vibrancy and beauty and sass." : Domnica Radulescu

1st May 2016