Photo by Diliana Stamatova
Editor’s Note
Ever since I first read Katerina Stoykova’s The Season of Delicate Hunger: An Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry in 2015, I knew there was something special about Bulgarian writing. In recent years, the rest of the world has begun to notice too, most visibly when Georgi Gospodinov’s novel Time Shelter won the 2023 International Booker Prize. Gospodinov is, of course, a leading voice in contemporary Bulgarian literature, and a poet I first discovered among the pages of Stoykova’s anthology. But as deserved as his recognition is, he is not the whole story. The truth is, too few Bulgarian books are translated and released by major American and British publishing houses. As is often the case, small presses are left to pick up the slack, but even the most devoted among them have limited staff and resources to publish and give each work the attention it merits. Still, the catalogue is growing.
With this issue, I hope to make a small contribution to that catalogue. You’ll find an eclectic mix of poets here, some established, some emerging, and at least one publishing for the first time. There are works by Bulgarians living in the US and writing in English; an Englishman living in Sofia, writing in Bulgarian, and translating back into English; and of course, many others living, working, and publishing in Bulgaria, but still largely unknown to the Anglophone world.
I am grateful to B O D Y’s editors Christopher Crawford, Joshua Mensch, Stephan Delbos, Michael Stein, and Jan Zikmund for entrusting me with their magazine and supporting this issue, which I first conceived of while living in Sofia on a Fulbright Scholarship last spring. Although more translations are needed, contemporary Bulgarian literature has one great advantage: a wonderful community of dedicated translators. Many of them contributed work and/or advice to this issue, and I’d like to thank them all, especially Angela Rodel, Tom Phillips, Ekaterina Petrova, Maria Vassileva, and, of course, Katerina Stoykova, the first editor to bring contemporary Bulgarian writing to my front door. May I do the same for you.
— Clint Margrave, Guest Editor