Uncategorized

The 2020 BCWC Award Ceremony, which took place on February 15, was a wonderful celebration of creativity and perseverance! All attendees relished the opportunity to meet other members of the BCWC community in person, exchange ideas during our daytime activities and reflect on the vital role of literature together – in helping us make sense of our actual world on the one hand and transcend its limitations on the other. The program started with a tour of the American University in Bulgaria’s outstanding facilities. Our winners and their teachers and parents could then attend a fascinating writing workshop with AUBG Professor Michael Cohen, a seasoned literature instructor and writer himself. He shared incisive advice – “Start with the setting”- and then illustrated how any environment both moulds and reflects the characters by referencing examples from timeless literary works. We were particularly impressed with his presentation of the technique of “defamiliarization”, rendering pedestrian objects that have become inconspicuous newly fascinating. With just a few minutes to complete a short exercise, the students came up with original representations of ordinary objects, such as whiteboards and pillows. Their short excerpts, just like this year’s distinguished works about the secret lives of helium-filled balloons or winter coats, demonstrate that literature’s power doesn’t derive so much from its subject matter, as its potential to disrupt the habitual and subtly alter our perceptions. The award ceremony that everyone had been waiting for started with a brief address from our Executive Director, Dimitar Tsekov, and the announcement of a special anniversary collaboration with our partners from MM TV! Impressed with the quality of the winning poems, MM’s team thought one could seamlessly turn into the lyrics of a song! It was so difficult to choose just one that we decided to put it to a vote and let our online audience pick by voting online! At the start of the evening, Rumyana Ivanova from MM TV announced the winner: Iva Bankova from Varna and her poem “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”! Here is the first stanza: East and West – two opposite directions. Sun and moon – two different creations. Sun was a man, who loved to be seen. Moon was a maiden, who was on him keen. After the Musical Club of AUBG greeted the attendees with a couple of songs from their new production, Rent, it was time to finally celebrate the talented student writers! Before calling the winners in each grade level on to the stage, we tried to share glimpses of their works with the audience, though we felt it would be impossible to convey all their merits: their distinctive styles, the voices of their characters, and all the transporting descriptions of setting and mood.  We want to extend special thanks to our partners for allowing us to provide such outstanding young writes with a fitting platform and reward their accomplishments: The United States Embassy in Bulgaria, The American University in Bulgaria, British Council Bulgaria, Mondelez, Klett Publishing, Express Publishing, MM TV, and Cynthia Phoel, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria and longtime supporter of the competition. Slavina Moraliyska from British Council presented a special award, a free CAE exam, to Dimitar Sagrev. Stefan Novoselski, Assistant Director of Admissions at AUBG, announced the winners of two other special awards. Yana Golemanova and Aneliya Neycheva won a three-week international summer camp at AUBG and an intensive TOEFL course, respectively. Marin-Konstantin Palatov from Sofia was the recipient of a special award generously provided by Cynthia Phoel. All laureates received water bottles with the BCWC logo, books provided by Klett and Express Publishing and the CORPluS Foundation, and a bag of sweet treats from Mondelez Bulgaria.        We hope we’ve inspired our attendees to keep reading and writing!

We are happy to announce the national winners of the 10th Bulgarian Creative Writing Competition! All works that qualified in the regional round were read and assessed by our panel of 13 native speakers and Bulgarian professionals: Mariya Stefanova, Nadya Zaharieva, Galina Nikolova, Angelina Mirazchiyska, Gergana Paraskova, Darina Konova, Vladimir Mihaylovski, Joseph Herr, Sarah Perin, Dimitar Tsekov, Valya Zavyalova, Zara Rancheva, and Gergana Yaneva Here are the 2020 National Winners! All 22 winners as well as their English teachers (1 per school), will be invited to attend the official BCWC awards ceremony in Blagoevgrad on February 15, 2020 . Schools and winners will be contacted individually at a later time in order to coordinate the logistics for the event. Once again- congratulations to all winners and participants! We will share the distinguished works on our website soon!

Congratulations to all participants in the 10th Bulgarian Creative Writing Competition! On January 11th, our 45 judges were fully immersed into the lively, multifaceted worlds that our young authors created. These worlds were populated by inanimate objects such as helium- filled balloons and confined winter coats which could speak with distinctly human voices and memorable protagonists whose struggles and comic embarrassments were instantly relatable. Difficult as it was, the judges selected the following 112 national qualifiers: 10th BCWC National qualifiers Here are some interesting statistics from this year’s competition: Schools Participating: 147 Number of participants: 3304 Schools with the largest number of participants: АЕГ „Гео Милев“, Русе – 91; ЧСУ „Св. Георги“, София – 89; ЕГ „Пловдив“, Пловдив – 86; СМГ „Паисий Хилендарски“, София – 64; ЕГ “Акад. Л. Стоянов”, Благоевград – 63 Schools with the largest number of qualifiers: АЕГ „Гео Милев“, Русе – 7 ученици; ПЧМГ, София – 6; ЧСУ „Св. Георги“ – 6; СМГ „Паисий Хилендарски“ – 5; Първа езикова гимназия, Варна – 4, Special thanks to our preliminary judging panels who did a great job reading and rating more than three thousand creative pieces of writing!    

The official presentation of our book The Story of an Hour took place in the National Library “St. Cyril and Methodius” yesterday, November 26th and what a joyful evening it was! The Story of an Hour is a collection of 33 outstanding student works from the first ten years of the Bulgarian Creative Writing Competition. There could be no better way to mark the 10th Anniversary than recognize the students’ insight and eloquence and share them with a wider audience! The evening was the culmination of many smaller feats: the students’ answers to the challenge of the blank sheets and the brevity of an hour; the dedication of our perceptive judges, and the support of our invaluable partners who help us foster both spur-of-the-moment creativity and continuous personal development among Bulgarian youth. The publication of the book itself wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of the US Embassy in Bulgaria. We were thrilled that we could hear from different members of the community that has grown around the BCWC! Galina Nikolova, who has helped select the winning works for a few years in a row, described a typical day of judging in the national round. “There would be a few readers, each sitting quietly in her own corner of CORPluS’s office and then someone would laugh, gasp, or exclaim loudly — it didn’t matter that the author was only a sixth grader, as long as they compellingly conveyed a universal emotion.” If anything, it seems that a youthful gaze and the freedom from grown-ups’ assumptions work to the authors’ advantage. Veronika Belcheva, who created the book’s lovely illustrations shared her heartfelt gratitude to the young authors for challenging the norm that “we have to be excellent at all times in order to write, paint or dance. “These students, by being vulnerable and sharing their work, give us the courage to express ourselves in turn”, Belcheva said. Drake Weisert, Public Affairs Officer of the US Embassy, complemented these comments by remarking that it was great to see so many supportive adults in the audience, whose lives are also enriched by the ingenuity of their children or students. The significance of creative writing at a young age is “lasting”, Weisert emphasized. “It gives one the confidence that they can communicate their ideas and values clearly, and once developed, this confidence is for life”. Our guests enjoyed a reading of some of the selected works in The Story of an Hour by authors Mihaela Bratanova, Radost Tudzharska, and Maria Ilieva. Peppi and Vilizar, a memorable pair of ukulele players and friends, won the audience’s hearts with their playful interpretations of the well-known song “City of Stars” and the soundtrack from “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. You can order your copy of The Story of an Hour here!