Literary translator from English and Macedonian into Bulgarian in residency at Goten in Skopje, North Macedonia
Bio
Ekaterina Petrova is a literary translator and a bilingual nonfiction writer. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. Her work has appeared in various Bulgarian and English-language publications, including Asymptote, Words Without Borders, European Literature Network, EuropeNow, Ninth Letter, Drunken Boat, B O D Y, Vagabond, Dnevnik, Capital Light, and Balkan Travellers. Ekaterina’s translation of Bogdan Rusev’s novel ‘Come to Me’ was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2019, while the nonfiction anthologies ‘My Brother’s Suitcase and Fathers Never Go Away’ in her translation came out with ICU Press in 2020. A collection of her essays/travelogues called ‘Thingseeker: 44 (Un)usual Objects from Near and Far’ was published in Bulgaria by Janet 45 in 2021.
Ekaterina has been a translator and writer-in-residence at the Reading Balkans program in Belgrade, Serbia; Art Omi Translation Lab in Ghent, NY; the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, UK; the Prishtina Has No River program in Kosovo; and Open Letter Books in Rochester, NY. Currently based in Sofia, Ekaterina is co-teaching a weekly translation class at Sofia University, occasionally leading and taking part in translation workshops, and working on Iana Boukova’s novel ‘Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow’, for which she was awarded a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.
Photograph: © Yana Lozeva
Residency goals
During her residency stay at Goten in Skopje (North Macedonia), Sonja will be working on the translation of Rumena Bužarovska’s short story collection ‘Мојот маж’ into Bulgarian.
Residency events and materials
Discussion ‘Патувањата на преводите’ / ‘The travels of the translations’