Days of Bulgarian culture in Moscow

“Bible of weekdays”: Bozhana Apostolova speaks about modern Bulgarian poetry and herself

On September, 6 in the framework of Moscow International Book Exhibition and Fair in All-Russian Exhibition Center, Conference hall № 2 at 2.30 p.m. there will the meeting with the unique person, poet, writer, publisher, successful business-woman, organizer of the largest literary festival in Bulgaria “Plovdiv reads”. The meeting with Bozhana Apostolova will be anchored by the Russian writer Yuri Polyakov.

The name of meeting “Bible of weekdays” is not occasional. The thing is that even if Bozhana Apostolova hasn’t written a line about herself, there would be someone else who would write about her life. The successful head of the publishing house “Janette-45” was born in a very poor family on the Victory day, May, 9 1945, her father lacked both legs and her mother became widow at the age of 27. Bozhana Apostolova described her childhood in the book “Bible of weekdays” (the book is translated into Russian and will be presented at the Fair), telling about a small poor girl who invents a lot of ways to survive and doesn’t lose her dignity, it is a book about how children games later become models of adult successful life, about the girl, her hunger, poverty, how to preserve the identity in extremely difficult conditions. “Bible of weekdays” implies desperation caused by lack of life conveniences together with strong wish to break the wall of non-existence, to break through, to call and receive the answer... The girl finds her harbour in poetry which moved the girl from cruel weekdays to the world of dream and beauty, opened her the way to future. Bozhana Apostolova graduated from Philological Faculty, Department of Bulgarian Philology of the University of St. Cirill and Methody. Her first book was published in 1978 году. Since than she published 12 collections of poems and 2 prosaic books united under the title “Bible of weekdays”.

Now Bozhana Apostolova is laureate of several national and international awards for poetry as well as significant cultural contribution she has made publishing Bulgarian poets and prosaic being the founder and CEO of the Printing and publishing house “Janette-45” in her native Plovdiv.

She deserves special gratitude for attention to Russian literature. Together with “Fakel” magazine Bozhana Apostolova publishes Bulgarian translations of modern Russian prose and poetry separately, while the profit of poetical books is negligible. It is quite a deed in the world of pure pragmatism and money power which doesn’t value the culture... The series “New Russian prose” gave way to Bulgarian translations of many famous Russian authors such as Victor Erofeev, Vladimir Voinovich, Edward Limonov, Anatoly Korolev, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsin, Vasily Axenev.

Bozhana Apostolova is the organizer of the largest literary festival in Bulgaria “Plovdiv reads” in which one-month framework writers from different countries read their texts in a Roman-built theatre. This festival has been conducted in Bulgaria for 5 years. Moreover, she organizes the festival of young authors “Young Plovdiv reads” and is also the founder of annual literary poetical premium “Ivan Nikolov”.

In 2008 Bozhana Apostolova was awarded by the premium “Golden Muse”, in this connection the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation expressed his congratulations in the letter.

Organizers of the event: the International association “Live classics”, Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications.

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