ANDREI CODRESCU was born in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania, and emigrated to the United States in 1966. He is the author of numerous books: poems, novels, and essays. He founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Books and Ideas. He was a regular commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered. He taught literature and poetry at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Baltimore, and Louisiana State University
Podcast and Play: The Second Oswald
Was Lee Harvey Oswald a ‘patsy’? Meet Kerry Thornley
Kerry Thornley wrote a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald. Kerry finished his unpublished novel in 1962, over a year before Lee Harvey Oswald shot John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963
Thornley also co-wrote Principia Discordia, the manifesto of a mock religion called Discordianism, about the goddess Eris of Chaos. This text echoed the paranoid style at play in post WWII American culture and politics, with historic and future resonance from The Realist to Q-Anon
This is not just another conspiracy theory. Thornley’s early interest in Oswald brought him to the attention of the Warren Commission; later still, Thornley implicated himself in the plot to kill Kennedy
THE SECOND OSWALD is a limited podcast series written and narrated by National Public Radio (NPR) commentator and Peabody award winner Andrei Codrescu
To accompany the launch of the THE SECOND OSWALD podcast, a live play featuring Andrei and Bob Holman as Kerry Thornley will be performed November 13, 2023 7p at Bowery Poetry NYC. After the play, author of the United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory (HarperCollins, 2013), Jesse Walker, will discuss the podcast and play with Andrei. more here
Written & Narrated by Andrei Codrescu – Produced by Ram Devineni
Ram Devineni produced The Russian Woodpecker – winner 2015 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize & 2015 Independent Spirit Award nominee
Latest Book: A Possible Epic of Care: A Collaborative Poem Between Andrei Codrescu and Vincent Katz
Andrei on his collaboration between himself and Vincent Katz: ‘Our common bonds at that curious time of the planet-engulfing Plague were various: we were friends, we were poets, we took poetry seriously enough to believe in its superpowers, but above all, we both had mothers who at ages past ninety needed the care and attention that we could provide them.
Our exchanges quickly became an ongoing epic of care. It became also a store of reminiscences, activities and ideas that paid homage to the women we cared for—communiqués and confessions that we would have liked them to appreciate
Black Widow Press – October 17 2023
Award: The International Fusion Museum’s Kafka Prize
In recognition of Codrescu's literary excellence, his public passion and defense of the arts, and his work in publishing, radio and television…residencies in Stare Mesto–Prague 1 & Hostka the Czecch Republic. 2023–2024
Recent Book: Too Late for Nightmares
One hundred pages of cri-de-coeur poems written while washing vegetables and hands in the dark panic days of 2020-2022 in order to repel the horrors of Covid politics of those stolen years. Intended as spells these works are meant to heal
Black Widow Press – Sept 2022
“My only job is to think." Me too, and I think you might be a cross between a secular WH Auden only with a sense of humor, and Frank O'Hara only straight. Or you are a fast train giving off sparks when you round corners, and the track is all corners. Anyway, I really love this book and am dog-earing it compulsively. Not only the poems about poetry, but things like "the weather is nice" and "Walk on all fours" and "still hunting" make me breathless with adoration, as Wordsworth says. All that anger in the same bed as all that fun. Alicia Ostriker 11.29 2022 on "Too Late for Nightmares"
"With humor and grace, wisdom and tenderness, Codrescu transforms the commonplace into the miraculous. His work is cause for celebration" – Kay Boyle
"Andrei Codrescu lives and writes at the edge of his imagination. He is a poet of hope and political defiance, of exaltation and exuberance" – Walter Bargen
“Grab any dozen adjectives, and they’ll probably describe Andrei Codrescu: dazzling, funny, generous, warm, principled, loyal, dangerous, flaneur, Mr Present… It’s amazing how little ennui he’s capable of” – Elinor Nauen
