Presentation of the Bulgarian poetess Silvia Choleva, the translator Ekaterina Petrova, and Nevena Dishlieva-Krysteva, the founder of ICU Publishing, in conversation with the British publisher Susan Curtis

London Book Fair 2025 will take place from 11th to 13th March. We are proud that for the second consecutive year, the Bulgarian Cultural Institute London will provide a stand for Bulgarian authors and publishers at this global book festival in London. To further showcase our literature, the Bulgarian Cultural Institute London is organizing a Month of Bulgarian Literature from February 13th to March 13th. During this period, some of the most prominent Bulgarian writers and poets will be presented along with their English-language publishers.

“Presentation of the Bulgarian poetess Silvia Choleva, Ekaterina Petrova (translator ) and  Nevena Dishlieva-Krysteva, the founder of ICU Publishing, in conversation with British publisher Susan Curtis” is one of the most important events, organised by BCI London. It will take place on 13th March 2025 from 19:00 PM at Bulgarian Cultural Institute, Gallery Sofia.

Silvia Choleva was born in Sofia in 1959. She is the author of six poetry collections, three plays, two books of prose fragments, a novel, and a collection of short stories. A book of her new and selected poetry, The Unexpected Answer, edited by Maria P. Vassileva, and her book of prose fragments Journeys There and Back, translated by Ekaterina Petrova, have been published in English in 2025. Her work has been translated into Greek, Serbian, Czech, Lithuanian, Turkish, French, and Norwegian. She is the recipient of several national awards, including the Ivan Nikolov poetry prize, the Golden Age badge of honor for contributions to Bulgarian culture, and the Hristo Danov award for her work as a journalist. She has been a staff presenter for Bulgarian National Radio for the last twenty years, hosting the Artefir culture program. In 2012, she founded Da Poetry Publishing with Iglika Vassileva and Kaloyan Ignatovski.

Ekaterina Petrova holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. Over the last 15 years, she has translated novels, short stories, nonfiction texts, poetry, plays, and children’s books by many Bulgarian contemporary authors, including the anthologies My Brother’s Suitcase, Fathers Never Go Away, and Stories from the ’90s (ICU Press, 2020, 2020, 2023), Iana Boukova’s poetry collection Notes of the Phantom Woman (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024), and Silvia Choleva’s book of prose fragments Journeys There and Back (ICU, 2025). Her translation of Iana Boukova’s novel Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow, for which she received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, is forthcoming from New York Review Books in 2026.

Nevena Dishlieva-Krysteva, the founder of ICU Publishing. ICU Publishing is an independent press of literary fiction. We publish a dozen books per year—both by Bulgarian and international authors. For our small and passionate team, every book is a moving personal experience meant to help us see each other better. ICU means I SEE YOU—as a partner, as a human being. Most of our books invite genuine empathy towards our fellow human beings and offer literary escape routes.

Our themes are the big topics of contemporary life, such as identity, home, road, loss, boundaries. The authors-in-translation in our portfolio include Olga Tokarczuk, Kapka Kassabova, Thomas Mann, Gunar Gunnarson, Chris Cleave, Rose Tremain, Colm Toibin, Hisham Matar, among others. We also publish Bulgarian authors, some of them both in English and Bulgarian, such as Dimitar Kotzev-Shosho, Silvia Choleva, etc., as well as three anthologies by more than 60 contemporary Bulgarian authors: My Brother’s Suitcase, Fathers Never Go Away and Stories from the 1990s. All of the above translated into English by Ekaterina Petrova.

The event will be moderated by Susan Curtis, Director of the English publishing house Istros Books, an independent publisher of contemporary literature from South East Europe, London. Istros Books was set up in 2011 to showcase the very best of literature – both fiction and non-fiction – from the Balkan region to a new audience of English speakers, bringing the best of European writing through quality translation. Its authors include European prize winners, polemic journalists turned crime writers and social philosophers turned poets.

Reserve your place HERE for an unforgettable evening!