Observing postcommunist Romania with the dual vision of a native and a scholar, Denise Roman focuses on the fluid act of identity-formation, and the construction or absence of identity-politics, in several minority or disempowered groups: youth, Jews, women, and queers. Roman shows how both aesthetic and moral judgments are born from and embedded in popular culture. Fragmented Identities is rich in observation and analysis, broad in scope, and exuberant in its account of cultural innovation and discourse wrought in response to the end of Communism and the influence of globalization.
Denise grew up in Bucharest. Before settling in Los Angeles, she lived in Italy, Germany, Finland, and Canada.
A member of the Authors Guild of America, Denise is the author of a monograph on Romanian arts, popular culture, and everyday life, Fragmented Identities (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, hardback; revised paperback edition, 2007) and of the fantasy novel for children Maria Dracula (out-of-print edition by iUniverse Editor's Choice, 2005; revised 2nd edition, 2007 by Duende Books and signed with the pen name Alice Rose). This children's novel was also translated in Romanian and published in 2007 by the prestigious Editura Didactica si Pedagogica from Bucharest (it is also signed Alice Rose). In June 2005, scenes from Denise's surrealist/absurdist play, Voyage to the Moon, were read by the actors of the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles. Denise has also published in 2007 her father's child Holocaust memoir - Calmo Rose, The Violinist.
Denise has taken classes in film, fiction, poetry, and play writing in the Film and Writers' Programs at UCLA - although she told and published stories and wrote poetry ever since she lived back in Bucharest. She published her first story in the "Ion Creanga" high-school journal "Ramuri" (Boughs) at eleven.
In her fiction writing, Denise blends Eastern European surrealist and North American realist traditions. She likes the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Louise Gluck, Charles Simic, Lucian Blaga, and Paul Verlain, as well as the absurd theater of Eugene Ionesco.
Some of her favorite authors are Arhundati Roy, Sandra Cisneros, Kate Braverman, Cynthia Kadohata, Italo Calvino, Theophile Gautier, Raymond Chandler, Alice Hoffman, Natalie Babbitt, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, and Paulo Coelho.
Some of the authors of children's books who have influenced Denise's writing are Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Brothers Grimm, Carlo Collodi, Edmondo de Amicis, Jules Verne, Hector Malot, Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Petre Ispirescu.
