Praise for Lenin

Here is what Jim Clark at The Greensboro Review wrote about "Buying Lenin"

...Out of nearly 1,000 fiction submissions, your story "Buying Lenin" has emerged in the top 20. From these stories I'll be choosing 8 to go into our forthcoming issue of The Greensboro Review. I'm just checking to make sure the story is still available to us before we get into the next stage of editorial deliberations...

I had sent the story by accident (meaning to submit "Tobacco Wedding" instead).

Buying Lenin

"Buying Lenin" will appear in the Autumn 2007 issue of The Southern Review.

Should I even comment on that? And the wonderful letter Mr. Lott sent me? But I had faith in this story. I knew he would like it. And the reason for my confidence has nothing to do with the quality of the story. It is a personal reason. Too personal for this beta blog.

Did you know that Katherine Anne Porter published Old Mortality, Noon Wine, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider in the Southern Review? I just found out. And was blown away...

Strange... who am I addressing as "you" when clearly no one even knows about this blog?

A Lily Peter Award

"Buying Lenin" won a Lily Peter award. Here is what the judge, novelist Rilla Askew, thought of the story:

In Miroslav Penkov's story "Buying Lenin" the great divide the main character longs to cross is literal: it is an ocean wide, generations deep. A young eastern European man comes to America, leaving his grandfather in Bulgaria, though he is never able, finally, to escape the grandfather's voice, spirit, vitality, dominance--any more than the grandfather has ever been able to let the young narrator go. With deft humor and rich imagery, Penkov paints a moving portrait of a grandfather and grandson separated by old wounds and vast distance but inextricably bound by blood that is "thicker than the ocean."

A Girl to Jog With

"A Girl to Jog With" won the First Prize at the 2005 Aging Well Writing Contest.

Devshirmeh

"Devshirmeh" was published in the Summer 2005 issue of The Southern Review. Many thanks to Bret Lott for his faith in me and to Donna Perreault for her wonderful edit, which only made the story better.

A Publication in Bulgaria

"Krav Bratska" (Кръв Братска) was published in Bulgaria by "Usuri" magazine.

The White Mariana

"The White Mariana" was published by The Prairie Margins.

Icarus Reborn

"Icarus Reborn" was published in the Spring 2005 issue of The Ozark Review