Biography

Betti Fayon

The other penname used by the same author until 2005 was Maria Karo. The writer was born in Varna in 1961, and her real name is Maria Dobrevska. She graduated from the German Language School in Varna and afterwards acquired a degree in philosophy and German at Sofia University. She translated modern German literature and managed to get her work published in magazines and literary newspapers; she presented Berlin’s alternative scene after the change, as well as avant-garde authors from the Vienna literary scene: from the Vienna Group to its contemporary followers, philosophical texts influencing today’s new literary trends: by Deleuze / Guattari (Rhizome), by Baudrillard (Passwords), by Robert Walser (The Walk), etc.

Printed publications by this author first appeared in 1987. As a writer and translator, she was awarded a three-month scholarship by the Heinrich Böll Foundation at Langenbroich, Cologne, in 1993; in 2000, she earned a Bundeskanzleramt für Kunst, Vienna, for a project related to H. C. Artmann’s poetry (the Vienna Group), in 2013 – Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, etc. Her novel The Breathing Hill was nominated for the 2011 Helicon Prize. It was translated in Macedonian under the title Disheckoto vozvishenie (Goten Publishing, Skopje, 2016).

Poetry

• The Glass Bars, Kritika i humanizam, 1993;
• Map, LIK, 1998;
• Juliette Letters, Horizonti, 2007;
• RIN, a joint project with Rositsa Pironska, Dedrax print, 2008.

Fiction publications since 2005

• The Breathing Hill, Ciela Soft and Publishing, 2010;
• Disheckoto vozvishenie, Goten Publishing, 2016.

Excerpts

• The Breathing Hill by Betti Fayon, translated by Angelina Sekulova

Critical Reviews

• Kristina Yordanova about Juliette Letters by Betti Fayon
• Kristina Yordanova about The Breathing Hill by Betti Fayon

Contact

• Betti Fayon:
  E-mail: betti.fayon@abv.bg

Related Links

• Maria Dobrevska, aka Maria Karo, Betti Fayon