The poet and critic Ivan Hristov was born on February 16, 1978. In 1996 he graduated from the National Aprilov High School in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, with a specialization in culture, aesthetics and art history. As a BA/MA student of Bulgarian philology at Sofia University from 1996-2001, he published his first poems and participated in his first literary competitions.
His first book of poetry, Sbogom devetnajsti vek [Farewell to the 19th century], was published in 2001 and won the prestigious 2002 Southern Spring award for the best debut book. His second book of poetry, Bdin, was published in 2004 and received critical acclaim, as well as the 2006 Svetlostrui Prize for poetry.
He regularly publishes poems in anthologies and leading Bulgarian periodicals including Literary Newspaper, Altera, Sega, Capital. His work has been translated into English, Croatian, German and Hungarian. Ivan has participated in poetry festivals abroad, including Ars Poetica in Bratislava in 2007 and the Goran Spring Festival in Croatia in 2009, where he received first prize in the Poetry Marathon in Hvar.
Ivan Hristov is also a leading literary critic of his generation. From 2005-2008 he was a doctoral student in contemporary Bulgarian literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; he successfully defended his PhD dissertation on Bulgarian modernism in the 1920s. He has numerous academic publications and regularly takes part in conferences both in Bulgaria and abroad.
Ivan’s contributions:
