Public Republic

Jasmina Tacheva Talks with Thomas C. Joyce, Adjunct Professor of English at Canisius College, Buffalo, New York Tom Joyce with his daughter, Gilbert. Photo courtesy of Fiona Joyce. 11/16/2011 What do you think literature is and why do we need it in our Hi-Tech, multi-fast, mega-dynamic society? I will answer in reverse order, because I […]

Jasmina Tacheva talks with author Petya Kokudeva Hello! Petya or Radost and what does “fist” have to do with your name? My name is Kokudeva – and “kokuda” in the Rhodope region means fist. My first name means stone or rock in Greek. On the other hand I was originally named Radost, but then my […]

Changming Yuan Photo: FelixHuth On the local screens, one beside another It shows low clouds drifting like fog That can be seen on the walls of highrises Here the rain downpours as if all the tabs In the heavens have been turned on Curtains of beads, giving us more privacy More freedom, more serenity

Donal Mahoney Photo: zigazou76 The indications used to come like movie fighter planes in break formation, one by one, the perfect plummet, down and out. This time they’re slower. But after supper, when I hear her in the kitchen hum again, hum higher, higher, till my ears are numb, I remember how it was the […]

Photo: beamillion Sanity is a cozy lie. Today everything exists to end in a photograph. Photo: mark217 I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list. The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests […]

Interview by Yana Radilova with the writer Frank Burton Frank Burton: “I’d like to think there’s no limit to anyone’s imagination.” Do you remember your first steps in writing? The first proper writing I did was at the age of about eight or nine. I started writing humorous poems, which were pretty good for a […]

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: calliope Theodor Bogdanov was powdering his face. “Sometimes I think he is following me. No, I’m sure he follows me. Hiding in the doorway of the house across the street, waiting for me to come out. Then, as I’m trying to figure out whether the drizzle is worth an umbrella, and I’m […]

Photo: piermario A novel is a mirror walking down a road. We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: arcticpuppy It was love at first sight. Stooping, he entered the shop and threw a quick glance around, just in case. His coat collar was turned up and his hat was pulled over his eyes. As it closed, the door hit the little bell above and he flinched. For a moment I […]

Kristin Dimitrova Снимка: binaryape The small park was huddled behind an administrative building with forbidding windows and several blocks of flats built in different times. Squeezed among them, a yellow house still defended its privacy behind a high brick wall. It looked like an aged David puzzled which Goliath to strike first. Unremoved Christmas decorations, […]

Interview with Barry George by Barbara Sabol Barry George’s haiku have been distinguished through numerous publications and awards. Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, to be released April 1, 2010 by Accents Publishing, is his first collection of haiku. George’s haiku blend a distinctly urban content with the nature-oriented perspective of traditional haiku. A true […]

An interview with the swedish writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri by Desislava Velichkova You were in Bulgaria just a year ago. Tell me about Sofia. Tell me your own opinion about the city! Unfortunately, I was in Sofia for too short a time to get to know it. Hopefully we will become friends next time. What […]

By Ellie Ivanova Ponti Stanley Fish’s column in the New York Times is probably the most prominent place where the world meets academia. After all, the world hardly reads The Chronicle of Higher Education and it’s sad these issues are otherwise largely ignored, beyond the annual college admission campaign. Getting into college seems to be […]

Interview with Nancy Ross-Flanigan by Cathy Shap Nickola Halfway through my teens, in the mid-1960s, my father abruptly announced he was moving the family from Oklahoma to a pin-dot of an island in the South Pacific. Strange Territory is a story about learning to feel at home in two alien places at once: the remote […]

Reviewed by Charlotte Pence Marilyn Kallet, author of fourteen books, opens her anticipated selected poems with “Jonah on Oprah,” a dramatic monologue that epitomizes how through wit, rhythm, and imaginative metaphors her poems arrive at insight: “I’ve lived through gut-wrenching / remorse, got swallowed up by it. // Now I understand I can’t run / […]

David Chorlton Photo: That Guy Who’s Going Places Dear Shivarov, or do you like Comrade Shivarov? So much has changed since you were the expert for literary matters in the case of Osip Mandelstam. I can imagine the room as one that cut his nerves to shreds as you stood before him with the poem

Joan Gumbs Photo: alicepopkorn According to Ig Publisher, publishers of Our Napoleon in Rags, Kirby Gann’s novel is a “biting commentary on contemporary America.” Argumentative. Whose commentary is it? Certainly not Gann’s, who, in an interview with Bob Williams from The Compulsive Reader declared, “There’s no specific ‘message’ the novel is trying to put across […]

Milena Kirova Photo: wonderlane During the last three decades we have been witnessing an unprecedented rise of attention to the literary specifics of the biblical text. Teaching the Bible as literature has turned into a constant presence in the undergraduate and the postgraduate schedules of most universities in Western Europe and in the United States. […]