The latest issue of Words Without Borders is devoted to contemporary Bulgarian writing, brought to you by director of the Bulgarian National Book Center Svetlozar Zhelev and translator extraordinaire Angela Rodel. They kick off the issue with a baseball-cap worthy-title essay “Making Bulgaria Great Again” where the case is made for culture being worth saving […]
There are only a few days left to apply for this year’s Sozopol Fiction Seminars that will take place on the Black Sea coastal town of Sozopol from June 18-22. The application deadline is March 20. The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation’s program offers full scholarships for 10 writers to come to Bulgaria – five English-speaking, five […]
The inaugural Sofia International Literary Festival is underway in the Bulgarian capital, comprising literary participants from Bulgaria and Balkan countries from December 10 – 15. Among the many writers in attendance are Bulgaria’s Georgi Gospodinov, Kristin Dimitrova, Miroslav Penkov and Milen Ruskov; Serbia’s Vladimir Arsenijević, Macedonia’s Goce Smilevski, Croatia’s Ante Tomić and Romania’s Dan Lungu […]
Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko is appearing at the University of Buffalo through November 3 for a series of events devoted to his work. He will read his poetry on November 1, hold discussions of his poetry and film, screen his film Stalin’s Funeral starring Vanessa Redgrave and be present at a Buffalo Philharmonic performance of […]
The fourth annual Conrad Festival begins on October 22 in Kraków, the city the great writer moved to as a child before he hit the seven seas and eventually settled down to become an Englishman. In fact, the festival has nothing to do with Joseph Conrad other than borrowing his lofty patronage to welcome similar […]
A feminist version of Don Juan, a 900-page work of Greek surrealism that is a mixture of Joyce, Freud and Breton, one of the best Russian novels of the 20th century – and 27 more to go. The European Society of Authors released its third annual Finnegan’s List at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, with […]
It’s positively raining literary festivals in this part of the world. Bruno Schulz, Slovenia and now Berlin. It would be a miracle if there’s any actual writing getting done. The International Literature Festival Berlin is underway and among the Central and Eastern European writers taking part are Nobel prize winner Herta Müller, Péter Nádas (who, […]
A list of 14 writers from Central Europe makes up the semi-finalists of Poland’s Angelus Central European Literature Award. The prize selects books from the region that have been published in Polish the preceding year and has had its share of big name as well as fairly obscure winners over its six-year history including Petér […]
The all-Bulgarian issue of Absinthe will be published in early May. The issue (#17) features writing by Georgi Gospodinov, Milen Ruskov, Emilia Dvoryanova, Vladislav Todorov, Krassimir Damianov, Kristin Dimitrova, Virginia Zaharieva, Vladimir Zarev, Yanitza Radeva, Ivan Dimitrov, Theodora Dimova, Zdravka Evtimova, Dimiter Kenarov, Maria Doneva, Niki Boikov and Stefan Ivanov. There will also be an eight page portfolio of […]
New books, uncertainty, a seminar and why writers should attend readings in their national folk costume There is a lot of new Bulgarian literature available at Three Percent in connection with the Bulgarian Contemporary Novel Contest run by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (EKF) and the America for Bulgarian Foundation. First of all, the 2010 winning […]
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