Romanian-American writer Maria-Cristina Necula was born in Bucharest, and immigrated to New York at the age of twelve. She received her B.A. in Language & Culture with a Music minor from Purchase College, and her M.A. in English Studies (Composition & Rhetoric) from Lehman College. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her dissertation-based book, The Don Carlos Enigma: Variations of Historical Fictions, was published by Academica Press in 2020. Maria-Cristina studied classical singing in New York, Bucharest, and at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, and has performed at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Florence Gould Hall, and the Westchester Broadway Theatre, among other venues. She has given talks on opera, languages, and literature at The Graduate Center, Baruch, The City College of New York, and UCLA Southland. Her rhymed translation of Molière’s comedy The School For Wives was performed at Canterbury Christ Church University in England. In honor of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was invited to translate, in both French and English, testimonials about Europe by noted international decision-makers, innovators, artists, and more, all collected in the book Europe à la carte (éditions le cherche-midi, 2009) to which she also contributed two of her own pieces. Maria-Cristina is a regular contributor to the culture & society website Woman Around Town and Classical Singer Magazine, and her work has also been published in Studies in European Cinema, Opera America, Das Opernglas, and Opera News. She is the recipient of a 2021-22 New York Press Club Award in the Critical Arts Review category for her review of Matthew Aucoin's Eurydice at the Metropolitan Opera. She is a 2022-24 Fellow of The Writers' Institute at The Graduate Center.