Biography

Florin Pîtea was born on 18 August 1971 in Câmpina, Prahova County. He graduated Nicolae Grigorescu High-School in Câmpina in 1989, then the University of Bucharest, (foreign languages and literatures, English major), in 1996, and in 1997 he got his MA in English literature at the same university. Since 1996 he has been teaching at “Spiru Haret” University, where between 1999 and 2001 he was chairman of the ”Hinterland” literary workshop. At present he is a lecturer and he teaches optional courses on 20th-century British and American fantasy and science fiction.

His literary debut was in ‘Anticipaţia’ magazine, no. 489, September 1992, and his activity as a translator began in the same magazine, no. 499, May 1993. He has published in “Almanah Anticipaţia”, in the magazines „Galaktika”, “Anticipaţia”, “Jurnalul SF”, “Ficţiuni” and “String”, as well as in the newspapers “Curierul Naţional”, “Avertisment din Nord-Vest” and “Zarva”. His short stories „Shai Tan” and „Necropolis” were awarded with the ARSFan Prize for the best fiction published in 1994 and 1995, respectively. In 1999, at the National Science Fiction Convention from Călăraşi, he received the first prize for his novella „In/Organic”.

He has been interviewed for the newspapers “Zarva” and “24 de ore”. QED Publishing House from Câmpina published his short story collection Necropolis. Since the autumn of 2000 he has had the column “Huckleberry Finn in a Paper Boat” in Lumi Virtuale online magazine (editor-in-chief Michael Haulică), and since April 2004 he has continued this column in the printed edition of the same magazine. In May 2004, Amaltea Publishing House published the second edition of Necropolis and the collection In/Organic. Since June of the same year he has been editor-in-chief of the Romanian fantasy and science fiction line of Amaltea Publishing Group. His novel Gangland was published in June 2006. At present he is working on his PhD thesis Art Not Quite Crime. He enjoys fiction, motion pictures, psychedelic and electronic music, as well as situations in which he refers to himself in the third person.