The Eudora Welty Prize in Fiction

Mr. Bret Lott from The Southern Review called me on Friday to say that my story "Buying Lenin" was awarded the 2007 Eudora Welty Prize in Fiction.

The Eudora Welty Prize in Fiction is given to the best short story published in The Southern Review each volume year. Previous winners of the award are Nicholas Montemarano (2006) and Keith Lee Morris (2005).

In my third year as an undergraduate student at the U of A I took a fiction writing class with Ellen Gilchrist. It is Ellen who made me believe I can write it English.

Ellen's first writing teacher was Eudora Welty.

Tobacco Wedding in Blackbird

Happy New Year to everyone! I just received a very nice email from Blackbird, letting me know that they've liked my story "Tobacco Wedding" enough to publish it in their Spring 2008 issue.

This is good news for so many reasons, not all of which obvious. To begin with, I really like this story, but my agent made a very convincing point that the story does not fit well with the rest of the collection and so we took it out. I do think this was the right decision. So I had accepted the fact that "Tobacco Wedding" will sit in a drawer forever.

In November I received an email from Blackbird that they had received the aforementioned story (look at all the fancy words I know) and will read it in the months to follow. Honestly, I was surprised -- I checked my sent emails (thank God for gmail) and found the original submission -- early in 2007. So again I figured nothing will come out of this... luckily I was wrong.

This story is very special to me, because it is, stylistically and thematically, a tribute to one of Bulgaria's greatest writers - Nikolay Haytov. Haytov's most famous collection of stories "Wild Tales," is in my opinion the greatest literary achievement in Bulgarian fiction (poetry aside, Bulgarian poets are gods). All stories in "Wild Tales" are about the people of the Rhodopa Mountain and I really wanted to have something about these people in my collection as well. "Tobacco Wedding" plays with a very common phenomenon of the olden days -- bride stealing, but puts a slight spin as now it is the groom that is being stolen. Short sentences, strong dialects, a lot of action, passionate characters, this is Haytov at his best, impossible to translate -- I wanted with my story to come close, but in English. I am now delighted that people will read my attempt, and hopefully like it.

I'm also happy that a friend of mine, Ash Bowen, a poet in our MFA program, is publishing his own work in the same issue.

Best of luck to all of you; this post has become too long...

Buying Lenin Featured...

A friend of mine just told me that "Buying Lenin" is featured on The Southern Review's web site.

Here is the link: http://www.lsu.edu/thesouthernreview/Autumn07_Penkov.html

You know, I wrote two paragraphs explaing how happy that makes me, how honored I am. But let me try to be minimalist, instead. And so I say,

It's really something...

It's out!

And in case you need a closer look:

A small trifle...

Today I finally received my two contributor copies of "Big Muddy etc." Quite frankly, I had given up on ever receiving them, but what do you know...

The story [Makedonija] appears without editorial intervention, which I don't think is necessarily a compliment for the story, as much as it is a strike against the journal.

Anyways, all looks fine until the bio note at the end, which reads:

Miroslav Penkov is a native of Bulgaria and is currently persuing an MFA degree at the University of Arkansas. She has published...

She? Oh, come on, I know my name is weird (in America) but anyone in the world of literature ought to be able to figure out that a name like Penkov belongs to a guy... Just look at all the great Russians: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin... okay, maybe not them, but you'll find some to give you a clue, I promise...

That's a small trifle really. Or is it?

Big Muddy Makedonija

The story "Makedonija" was just published in the spring 2007 issue of Big Muddy, a journal from the Southeast Missouri State University Press.

I got no father, I got no mother,
Father to scorn me,
Mother to mourn me,
My father – the mountain.
My mother – the shotgun.
Lay me, my Voivode,
Down in the black earth.
I want, my Voivode,
To die for Freedom.
For Freedom, my Voivode,
For Makedonija.

The Walton Fellowship

This, as all other news here, is for my friends back home, who might want to know that:

I was awarded the 2007-8 Walton Fellowship in fiction at the University of Arkansas. This is, really, a big deal, mostly because there are so many other good, good writers here who could have won the award.

Well, thank you Ellen and Molly and Skip. The money ammounts to roughly one million canadian dollars, which I will be given all at once, in cash, hundred dollar bills, non sequential order...

Do I really have to quote Dave Chappelle now...?

Lily Peter for "East of the West"

Novelist Paula Morris awarded my story "East of the West" a Lily Peter award.

"Makedonija" for AWP

Today I received a very pleasing phone call from Davis McCombs, the famous poet and current director of our MFA program. Davis informed me that my story "Makedonija" was chosen to represent our program in the AWP Intro Journals competition.

The Intro Journals Project is a literary competition for the discovery and publication of the best new works by students currently enrolled in the programs of AWP. Winners will be contacted in the spring of 2007 and each will receive an award letter, publication in a participating journal, and a $100 cash honorarium. Winning works will appear in the fall or winter issues of Hayden's Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Colorado Review, Puerto del Sol, Controlled Burn, Quarterly West, Tampa Review, Willow Springs, and Artful Dodge.

As doubtful as I am about this competition (after all, I am Bulgarian and we are not known for our optimism) I am truly honored to represent the MFA program here.

Along these lines, did you know that in the past few months over 40,000 Macedonians have applied for Bulgarian citizenship? Even Macedonia's ex-prime minister is now, officially, a Bulgarian citizen. So much for pride and nationalism. Sad to see what people will do for a European passport.

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