Leonard Oprea - Life and Career

Life and Career

Oprea was an anti-communist dissident in Romania during Nicolae Ceauşescu's dictatorship. He was born in Prejmer, a village in Braşov (Kronstadt) County in the south-eastern part of Transylvania, central Romania.

Between 1980 and 1987 he published a book and several short stories. In 1984 he published his first book, Domenii Interzise (Forbidden areas), short stories and novellas, and some other short stories in Romanian literary reviews and won national literary prizes. After 1987, the Securitate (the Secret Police of the Communist regime), officially forbade the publication of his writings.

After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he lived in Bucharest and resumed writing and became a journalist and editor. He founded the Romanian publishing house Athena, the Vladimir Colin Romanian Cultural Foundation as well as the Vladimir Colin international awards. At the Vladimir Colin Romanian Cultural Foundation, Oprea organized national and international conferences, seminars and literary workshops in collaboration with various bodies such as the University of Bucharest, national publishing houses and national newspapers.

Among his activities at the Athena publishing house Oprea published three bilingual (English-Romanian) editions, including works of the poet Nichita Stănescu, and essays by the philosopher Constantin Noica and by Mircea Eliade.

Between 2003 and 2007, Oprea published social and philosophical essays, short stories, and his Breathings in the American-Romanian social and cultural magazines from New York and Portland, Oregon - New York Magazin and Romanian Times, USA.

Between 2005 and 2007 he published cultural and philosophical essays, and short stories in the Canadian-Romanian cultural magazine Atheneum from Vancouver, Canada.

Since 1999 he has been living in the USA, currently in Auburn, Maine, and previously in Boston, Massachusetts.