In selecting her as the winner the Asturias jury highlighted Ana Blandiana's "indomitable poetry" with which she has shown an "extraordinary capacity for resistance in the face of censorship." Ana Blandiana has won the Foundation's coveted Literature prize at a ceremony broadcast live from the north-western Spanish town of Oviedo. The annual award recognises "the work of cultivating and perfecting literary creation in all its genres".
The president of the jury, Santiago Muñoz, declared that Blandiana was selected for being "a radically singular creator", whose writing, "combines transparency and complexity, raises fundamental questions about the existence of human beings in solitude and society in the face of nature and history". Blandiana, according to the jury, "has shown with her indomitable poetry an extraordinary capacity for resistance in the face of censorship." Her first book of poems was published in 1964 and she became an established poet in the same decade with the works 'The Vulnerable Heel' and 'The Third Sacrament'.
Blandiana has since developed cult status in Europe and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Born in Timisoara in 1942, Blandiana is also known for her political activism. Following the 1989 Revolution in Romania she founded a campaign promoting the elimination of the country's communist legacy and lobbied for the creation of an open society.
She is a founding member and president of the Civic Alliance Foundation since 1994.
