Rea-Silvia Costin, P.E.-Author

Well, I am a Professional Engineer by training and career. I was born in Greece and raised in Romania as my mother was Greek and father Romanian.

Since I remember myself as a small girl in school, back in Romania, I was fascinated with books. I’d read everything that I could get my hands on. I remember going to the school’s (I was attending “Sava” in Bucharest) big library and browsing the shelves full of books and thinking:  “I read all the classics”. And talking about classics I mean, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, and Flaubert and Cronin, and Tennessee Williams, by the time I was 10 years old. These kind of books enrich your soul, open a window into your mind, your imagination, and your heart, make you dream of other times, and worlds, and people.

It is strange how you can remember certain moments in your life like a flash light is turn on: The librarian, an old neatly dressed gentleman wearing glasses and a red bow tie, was perched on his chair behind his desk, engrossed in reading. Timidly, I approached him after I carefully selected my book and handled it to him to check out. It was just the two of us in the vast library. He looked up the book and came around his desk to look at me: “Does your parents know what you are reading?” he asked looking at me. I was a small girl, timid, a straight “A” student, quiet like a mouse and probably looking like one in my dark uniform. Then, he looked into my pleading eyes and gave me the book. It was Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary”.

Later on, I immigrated to the United States via Greece, and these events left a big impression on me. So, I started to write about my life’s journey and published my first book “Short Stories: The Story of a Refugee” in 1977, followed by what I envisioned as a trilogy: “Thiana-AVDELA”, “ATHENS” and “America-the Final Destination”.

As I was, and still am, fascinated with love I started to put my feelings into poems and wrote two volumes of poetry: “Pearls on a String: Love Songs”. I’m presently working on my third volume of poetry.