Start: 04/18/2014 6:00 pm

FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 6 PM

SEMINARY CO-OP BOOKSTORE

5751 S. WOODLAWN AVENUE

PHONE: 773.752.4381

Co-Sponsored with The Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies (CEERES) at The University of Chicago.

In Bulgaria during the height of communism in the 1960s, six-year-old Manda survives her cruel grandmother and rural poverty by finding sheer delight in the world--plump vegetables, garden gnomes, and darkened attic corners. The young Manda endures severe beatings, seemingly indestructible. But as a middle-aged artist in newly democratic Bulgaria, she desperately tries to feed her damaged soul with intrepid creativity and humor.

Georgi Gospodinov talks about his novel Physics of Sorrow  on Deutschlandradio Kultur. In his newest book, the Bulgarian writer recounts the stories of people’s lives ruined in XX c. Bulgaria. A recording is available here.

A presentation of the novel Adriana by the Bulgarian writer Teodora Dimova in David Bernstein’s Czech translation was hosted by the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Prague on Dec. 5, 2013. The presentation took place in the heart of Prague, in the Václav Havel Library. The Czech translation of Adriana was  published with the financial support of Bulgarian National Culture Fund. The author Teodora Dimova, the translator David Bernstein, the publisher Petr Štengl, as well as Marcel Černý (Czech Academy of Sciences) and Ivana Srbková (Czech National Library)  among others, were present on the occasion.

The event was given a hearty welcome by the Czech public  that filled up the hall of the Václav Havel Library. For most of  those present the  encounter with the charismatic Bulgarian writer and her novel Adriana was the first encounter with Bulgarian literature and culture in general.

A video from the presentation is available here.

20^th World Congress of FIT

Man vs. Machine ?
The Future of Translators, Interpreters and Terminologists

Registration has started on 6^th January 2014.

The congress will take place in Berlin, 4^th-6^th August 2014.

http://www.fit2014.org/

The winners of the Vladimir Filipov translation competition, in which students translate poetry from Bulgarian into English, are to be announced on 17^th January 2014. The competition is organised annually by the University English and American Studies Foundation as a way of honouring and keeping up the achievements of Professor Filipov, a renowned translator from and into Bulgarian and a researcher in the field of English-language literature. In the current eighth edition of the competition, students are translating poems by Maria Doneva and Ivan Teofilov.

For more details and for the final decision of the jury, please visit

 http://www.afeasbg.com/contest.html

On 13^th-14^th October 2014, the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, will hold a conference for undergraduate and postgraduate students on the topic of Bulgaria – Traditional and Contemporary. The conference features a panel on the translation and reception of Bulgarian literature in Poland and of Polish literature in Bulgaria.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVES OF BULGARIAN STUDIES TODAY

on the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of the Bulgarian Philology programme at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest

The conference will take place on 28^th-29^th April 2014 at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Department of Slavic Studies.

For more information, please contact the organisers by email at: konferencia.budapest@gmail.com

Conference website: http://szlavintezet.elte.hu/conf/conf.shtml

Ivan Hristov’s American poems collection was published in December 2013, both in Bulgarian and in English, in Angela Rodel’s translation.

An interview with Ivan Hristov for the 3:AM Magazine is available at http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-95-ivan-hristov/.

Three of the poems are posted at http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/ivan-hristov-poetry-room/

A poem by Peycho Kanev from the Whisky in a Tin collection was published in the new issue of the UCity Review: http://www.ucityreview.com/7_Kanev_Peycho.html

Another poem by Peycho Kanev was published in the Chicago E-Zine Curbside Splendor. http://issuu.com/curbsidesplendor/docs/cs_e-zine_january_2014

2013 – two new books by Ilja Trojanow

DER ÜBERFLÜSSIGE MENSCH

For more information: http://www.residenzverlag.at/?m=30&o=2&id_title=1628

WO ORPHEUS BEGRABEN LIEGT

For more information: http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buecher/buch.html?isbn=978-3-446-24341-5