Alexandra Balm (née Dumitrescu) was born in 1974, in Cluj, Romania. She has a BA in English (hons.) and an MA in American Studies from the University of Cluj, where she worked with the renown anglicist Virgil Stanciu. In 2001 she proposed the concept of metamodernism as a cultural paradigm and a period term in literature. In 2014 she was awarded a PhD from the University of Otago, with a thesis about Metamodernism in Literature.  She was a teacher, researcher, and lecturer in Europe and NZ. She teaches English in South Auckland. Alexandra writes poems, short stories, and literary studies, and has recently (August 2017) submitted her novel as part of her MCW with AUT. She published in journals in New Zealand, USA, Australia and Europe: Takah?, Tui Motu, Exquisite Corpse, Noise Medium, Double Dialogues, Inter-textes, Echinox, Tribuna and Brain, Cognition, Behaviour, as well as in collective volumes at Rodopi, Facts on File, Napoca Star, Monster Fish, Scripta Manent. In 2000 she jointly translated with Ioana Nan Romanians and Romania by Ioan Aurel Pop (Columbia UP). Alexandra has received several awards, grants and fellowships from the Open Society Foundation, the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature, the Universities of Leeds, Otago and Calcutta, NZ Ministry of Education, Kate Edger Education Trust etc. She teaches in Auckland, where she lives with her family.

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