Ana Blandiana was born in Transylvania in 1942. The first of her many collections of poetry, First Person Plural, appeared in 1964. She has also published children’s books, fiction and essays, and wrote a regular column in Bucharest’s leading literary paper from 1974 to 1988. Forced into dissidence during the last years of the Ceauşescu dictatorship, she has been active in politics since its overthrow in 1989. She founded the Civic Alliance, a non-party movement aiming to help come to terms with the communist past, in 1994.