Floarea ¿üuianu [pronounced "Tsu-tsu-ya'-nu"] graduated from the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of the Fine Arts in Bucharest and turned to publishing poetry after the Romanian revolution at the end of 1989. She has published five books of poetry: The Fish Woman (Femeia pe¿te, Editura Cartea Româneasc¿, 1996); Libresse oblige (Editura Crater, 1998); The Lion Mark (Leul Marcu, Editura Aritmos, 2000); a volume of selected and new poems, The Art of Seduction (Arta seduc¿iei, Editura Vinea, 2002); and Your Magnanimity (M¿rinimia Ta, Editura Brumar, 2010). ¿üuianu was one of seven poets-the only woman-featured in a fat anthology of important contemporary poets published in Bucharest and titled Manual of Literature (Manualul de literatur¿, Editura Vinea, 2004). In 2007, she was awarded the Poetry Prize of the Lucian Blaga International Poetry Festival. Recently, she put together an anthology of her erotic poetry gathered from previous collections throughout her career, Sappho (Editura Cartea Româneasc¿, 2012). Many of those same poems are included here. ¿üuianu has commented, "Sappho and Emily Dickinson are my favorite poets. I would like to live like Sappho and write like Emily. Or to live like Emily and write like Sappho." ¿üuianu is a graphic designer at the Romanian Cultural Institute Publishing House in Bucharest, where she lives. She continues to work as a visual artist as well as a poet, and her numerous exhibits have appeared not only in Romania but also in Greece, France, Italy, Turkey, Israel, England, Holland, Germany and Austria. In 2011, Adam J. Sorkin and Irma Giannetti published My Dog-the Soul / Câinele meu-sufletul, a dozen poems in a dual-language chapbook that came out in New Zealand from Cold Hub Press. ¿üuianu's poems in Sorkin's and Giannetti's translations have appeared in notable poetry magazines in the U.S. and the U.K., including The Marlboro Review, Artful Dodge, Turnrow, Tampa Review, New Letters, Puerto del Sol, 5 AM, Diode, Poetry International, Blood Orange Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, St. Petersburg Review, The Dirty Goat, and two anthologies, The Vanishing Point That Whistles: An Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry, ed. Paul Doru Mugur, Adam J. Sorkin and Claudia Serea (Talisman House, 2011), and Romanian Writers on Writing, ed. Norman Manea and Sanda Cordö (Trinity University Press, 2011). Her poetry has also been translated into French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, and Czech.
