Radu Vancu (Sibiu, Romania, 1978) is a Romanian poet, scholar, and translator. A professor in the Faculty of Letters and Arts at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, he is the editor-in-chief of Transilvania magazine and an editor of Poiesis Internațional. He previously served as as the national editor of the Romanian section of the Poetry International website, and was president of PEN Romania between 2019–2023. Since 2013, he has also been president of Sibiu’s international writing festival Poets in Transylvania.

Vancu has published nine volumes of poems, which have been translated into more than 20 languages in anthologies, magazines, and books. He has also published two novels, Transparenta (2018) and Paradis (2025), and his first two books of poetry in English translation will be published in the U.S. in October 2026—Kaddish (tr. Sean Cotter, Zephyr Press) and The Rope in Bloom (tr. Paula Console-Soican and Cyrus Console-Soican, Phoenix Poets).

Vancu’s scholarly publications include two book-length essays on Mihai Eminescu and Mircea Ivănescu, as well as a book on the anti-humanist poetics of modernity. He has also translated novels and poetry, primarily from the works of Walt Whitman and John Berryman, and is the translator of the ongoing four-volume Ezra Pound edition edited by Horia-Roman Patapievici.

His participation is made possible by the support of the University of Iowa’s Office of the Vice President for Research and the generous support of Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr.