Sergiu Viorel Urma was born in Romania, where he earned an MA in English language and literature. After a two-year stint as a reporter for the state-run Radio Bucharest, he became a member of the Associated Press, first as an assistant and then as a correspondent from 1974 to 1987. After he was forced to leave the country by Romania’s communist authorities, he worked in Austria as an AP reporter covering Eastern Europe and the anticommunist revolutions occurring there. Since arriving in the United States in 1990, he worked on AP’s International Desk as an editor until 2014, when he retired after forty years with the company.

Urma is currently married and living in New Jersey. Screwed is his first book. His play, Chessgame, was published in 1996 by Modern International Drama, a magazine of contemporary international drama issued by Binghamton University, State University of New York