BIOGRAPHY

Anamaria Beligan is a writer, film maker and linguist. She was born and raised in communist Romania, where she attended the „I. L. Caragiale” Film and Theatre Institute and worked as film director for the „Alexandru Sahia” documentary studio. In 1982 she left Ceaușescu’s regime and defected to West Germany, together with her mother, Dana Lovinescu. They spent six months in a German refugee camp, then migrated to Melbourne, Australia. Here Anamaria worked as a film maker, taught at the Australian Film and Television School (Sydney), completed a Masters in Applied Linguistics at Monash University (obtaining the Cambridge University Press Award for her academic performance) and pursued her passion for writing, to which she currently dedicates most of her time. 

Her writings appeared in various Australian literary journals (Quadrant, RePublica,Voices, Double Dialogues) and anthologies (Picador New Writing, Daughters and Fathers - University of Queensland Press); as well as in Romanian literary journals (Literatorul, Moftul român, Ramuri, Luceafărul, Orizont, ARC, Vatra, Familia, Apostrof, Respiro, Lolocur, LiterNet) and a number of Romanian anthologies. 

In 1998, Polirom (Romania) published her first book, a collection of short stories entitled A Few More Minutes With Monica Vitti. The English version appeared in 2002 and was shortlisted for the national 2003 Steele Rudd Award for Best Short Story Collection. She subsequently wrote: Letters to Monalisa (a novel, published by Polirom in 1999), Love is A Trabant (a collection of short stories, published by Curtea Veche, 2003 - shortlisted for the 2003 Romanian Publishers' Association Award (AER)),  motherbena.com (a novel,  published by Curtea Veche, 2005 and by Equator, Melbourne, in 2006), Windermere: Love at Second Sight (a novel, published by Limes, Cluj, in 2009 and by Forte Publications, 2010 - launched at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival). An anthology of her short fiction, entitlred A Remarkable Skull, was published by Editura Litera, Bucharest, in 2011. Second editions of Letters to Monalisa and of A Few More Minutes With Monica Vitti were published by Limes, Cluj, in 2012 and 2015, respectively. 

Anamaria has completed a new novel, entitled The Ilyich Tree, whose English and Romanian versions are in the process of publication. 

The Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts has generously supported many of Anamaria’s projects.