NPR People
Andrei Codrescu, NPR Biography
Commentator, All Things Considered
Photo: Brian Baiamonte
Poet, essayist and novelist Andrei Codrescu has been contributing commentaries to NPR's award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered since 1983. During this time, he's also reported from Romania, Cuba and New Orleans.
In 1989, Codrescu returned to his birthplace of Romania after an absence of more than 20 years, a homecoming he documented for NPR through a series of six commentaries. His story was also featured on ABC News' Nightline, and Codrescu published The Hole in the Flag: an Exile's Story of Return & Revolution about the experience.
Codrescu's poetry, short stories, and novels have been widely translated. He wrote and starred in "Road Scholar," a Peabody Award-winning travel documentary about the United States, based on the book of the same name. His works include Alien Candor: Selected Poems, 1970-1997; six collections of essays, including A Craving for Swan and Raised by Puppets Only to Be Killed by Research, and The Disappearance of the Outside. Codrescu is also the author of four novels: The Blood Countess, a national bestseller; Messiah, a novel chronicling the onset of millennial fever; Casanova in Bohemia, about the 18th century illuminist philosopher and adventurer Giacomo Casanova; and Wakefield, a novel about an inspirational speaker who makes a deal with the devil at the end of the 20th Century.
Among his recent books are, New Orleans Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writing from the City (Algonquin Books), and it was today: new poems (Coffee House Press).
Codrescu is currently the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. He writes a newspaper column and edits Exquisite Corpse, a monthly review of books and ideas.
Among the honors he has received are the George Foster Peabody Award, the ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, Big Table Poetry Award, the Towson State University Literature Prize, and the General Electric Foundation Poetry Prize. He has also been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for poetry, editing, and radio.
Born in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania, Andrei divides his time between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He travels and lectures extensively on interests as varied as his All Things Considered essays.
