Minkoff, Velina
Velina Minkoff is a literary translator and author. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from UCLA with a track in Creative Writing – Fiction, and a Master of Arts in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) with a track in European culture and history. She is a graduate of the École de Traduction Littéraire at the Centre National du Livre in Paris, France with a thesis in autotraduction (self-translation).
Born into a family of literary translators, she translated into Bulgarian The Love Machine by Jaqueline Susann (Colibri, 1992) while still a student at the English Language School in Sofia, followed by Jacintha by Kathleen Winsor (Bard, 1993). She is the author of a short story collection in English, Red Shorts (Colibri, 2001) and co-translator, with translation professor Patrick Maurus, of the French version of her Bulgarian debut novel, Доклад на зелената амеба за химическия молив (The Red and Blue Report of the Green Amoeba, Colibri, 2015) published in France as Le Grand Leader doit venir nous voir (The Great Leader Must Come See Us, Actes sud, 2018). Her first Bulgarian short story collection, Бразилски храст (Full-bush Brazillian, Colibri, 2018) contains her own translations of stories she originally wrote in English, and Les Shorts Rouges (The Red Shorts, Hémisphères, 2020) – her French translations of stories written in both English and Bulgarian.
She has translated several books, plays, films, poems, and short stories to and from English, Bulgarian and French. She was a participant in the Translators’ Atelier Workshop of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for four years in a row, resident translator at Open Letter Books in Rochester, NY, USA and auditrice libre at the master’s program of literary translation at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. She is a member of the Bulgarian Translators’ Union, the Association des traducteurs littéraires de France and the French Société des Gens de Lettres. Her translations have appeared in Vagabond, The Bridge Magazine, Exchanges Literary Journal, Eurolitkrant, and Drunken Boat, among others. Her self-translated debut novel The Red and Blue Report of the Green Amoeba (Доклад на зелената амеба за химическия молив, Colibri, 2015) was shortlisted in the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation contest for the publication of a contemporary Bulgarian novel into English by Open Letter Books.
Velina lives in Paris, where she freelances as a translator, editor, and writer. She is currently a doctoral candidate in translation of Bulgarian Literature at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO).
Read MoreNikolova, Olga
Olga Nikolova holds a PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard University (2005) and currently teaches writing and literature at the American University in Bulgaria. She has worked as a literary agent and a translator. She won an EFK fellowship at the University of Rochester for her translation of Albena Stambolova’s Everything Happens as it Does, which was published by Open Letter Books in 2013. She has translated numerous poems and literary essays from English and French. Her translation of selected essays by Ezra Pound („Само чувството пребъдва“) was published in 2020. She is also the founding editor of Peat Nekogash („Пеат некогаш“), an online literary journal (peatnekoga.com), and the author of collections of essays and a small book on the elements of writing („Тайните на писането“, изд. „Просвета“, 2023). She served on the jury for the Krastan Dyankov translation award in 2022.
Read MorePetrova, Ekaterina
Ekaterina Petrova is a literary translator and nonfiction writer. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship and helped edit Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. She also holds an MSc in European Politics and Governance from the London School of Economics and a BA in International Studies and German Studies from Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. Currently based in Sofia, Bulgaria, she has spent time living, studying, and/or working in Kuwait, New York, Berlin, Cuba, Northern Ireland, and the south of France. She has been a translator-in-residence at Art Omi Translation Lab in upstate New York and the Prishtina Has No River program in Kosovo, as well as a participant in several of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation’s translation programs, including a residency at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich and a fellowship at Open Letter Books in Rochester.
Ekaterina’s literary translations and nonfiction writing have appeared in various Bulgarian and English-language publications, including Asymptote, Words Without Borders, European Literature Network, Reading in Translation, EuropeNow, Ninth Letter, Drunken Boat, B O D Y, and Vagabond. Her translation of Bogdan Rusev’s novel Come to Me (Dalkey Archive Press) was published in 2019, while the nonfiction anthologies My Brother’s Suitcase and Fathers Never Go Away came out in her translation in 2020 (ICU Publishing).
She is currently teaching a translation class at Sofia University and working on Iana Boukova’s novel Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow, for which she was awarded a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.
Read MoreRodel, Angela
Angela Rodel is a professional literary translator living and working in Bulgaria. She holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from UCLA in linguistics. She received a 2014 NEA translation grant for Georgi Gospodinov’s novel The Physics of Sorrow (Open Letter 2015), as well as a 2010 PEN Translation Fund Grant for Georgi
Read MoreSekulova, Angelina
Angelina Sekulova was born on May 6, 1970, in Montana, Bulgaria and pursued her secondary studies at the local German and English Language school until 1989, when she enrolled in English at Sofia University. She obtained her master’s degree in 1994.
Read MoreSkipp, Peter
Peter Skipp
Born in Bulgaria in 1956, I studied there until 1971, moving to Britain to finish school and read Russian. Bilingual in Bulgarian and English, I live in London and Sofia, my airfare installments well on the way to purchasing a Boeing and my carbon footprint causing outrage.