“Is it possible for us to solve a problem our ancestors struggled with and by doing so liberate not only ourselves but also them, retroactively, and allow them repose as well? Reversing the direction of time’s arrow was an idea I wanted to explore in this novel.”
“These are complex emotional states that capture the performance of intimacy and affection”: Heather Ryan on Garth Greenwell’s debut novel, What Belongs to You.
“So little of the book was clear to me when I began writing”: Garth Greenwell discusses What Belongs to You, his debut novel from Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, with Mary Stewart Atwell.
Steven Wingate talks with Georgi Gospodinov about his new novel, The Physics of Sorrow, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel and published by Open Letter Books earlier this year.
“Writing is nothing but entering the memories of the body”: Bulgarian writer Viriginia Zaharieva talks with Steven Wingate about her novel Nine Rabbits.
Bulgarian Writer Zachary Karabashliev and Steve Wingate discuss the pleasures of semi-autobiographical fiction and the pain of trying to laugh in a foreign language.
In 2009 I attended the second annual Sozopol Fiction Seminars, sponsored by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and held each May on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. I lost my sunglasses in the sea, which the Bulgarians told me meant I had to return. This year I did go back, and most things have remained the same. There are still five English-speaking fellows and five Bulgarians, and the bus ride from the capital city of Sofia cross-country to Sozopol is both long and beautiful. Elizabeth Kostova, whom one might assume has too big of a name to share her work […]
Reminder: There are still a few days left to apply for the 2012 Sozopol Fiction Seminars. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Seminars, which take place each year in the historic, seaside town of Sozopol, on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. Famed fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and naturalist Barry Lopez will be the distinguished English language guest lecturer this season. Lopez is the author of many books, including Arctic Dreams, which received the National Book Award, Of Wolves and Men, which was a National Book Award finalist and the recipient of the John Burroughs and Christopher medals, and numerous […]
Step two: engage. Sozopol coverage continues with Molly Antopol’s conversation with Bulgarian author Miroslav Penkov and Lee Kaplan Romer’s meditation on writing as an act of defiance and grace.
Step One: Leave home. Three fellows from the Sozopol Fiction Seminar consider questions of travel, culture, and translation. Part I: John Struloeff on international diplomacy and collaboration, Jane E. Martin on finding home abroad, and Michael Hinken on how we rediscover home by leaving it. Later this week: Molly Antopol and Lee Romer Kaplan.
