site.btaBTA’s LIK Magazine “Literature and Memory”: Bulgaria’s Writers at Home and Abroad
BTA’s latest issue of LIK magazine, themed “Literature and Memory”, weaves together several stories about how Bulgaria remembers, curates and presents its literary heritage. The November issue was launched symbolically at the Ivan Vazov House-Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria’s first literary museum, and is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the National Literature Museum. BTA press clubs in and outside of Bulgaria joined the event.
The issue of LIK magazine also looks ahead to the many anniversaries of classic and contemporary Bulgarian writers in 2025, situating literary memory within a broader historical frame, from the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet to the present day, and raising questions about how the media, museums and cross-border initiatives keep this memory alive.
BTA Director General Kiril Valchev’s presented the issue at the Ivan Vazov House-Museum. He recalls that the museum, “Bulgaria's first literary museum”, opened on November 26, 1926, and called it “the ideal venue to launch the November issue of BTA's LIK magazine.” He linked the issue to the 1975 Council of Ministers’ order establishing a National Museum of Bulgarian Literature, quoting BTA’s report that “its task will be to identify, collect, preserve, study, publish and exhibit the material and documentary monuments connected with the entire history of Bulgarian literature.” Valchev listed the many writers’ anniversaries marked in 2025 and stresses that “we do not claim to be exhaustive, and it is quite possible that some names have been left out. What matters to us is to celebrate our writers' birth, not their death.” He said the issue carries “two major messages”: he was struck “by how many great literary figures a nation as small as ours has produced, and by how their memory has been preserved with dignity over the years”, and he called on the media to do more when presenting Bulgarian literature at home and abroad. One of his ideas is that “the World Meetings of Bulgarian Media [should] also involve translators from Bulgarian and foreign journalists who write about Bulgaria.”
LIK Editor-in-Chief Georgi Lozanov and Managing Editor Yanitsa Hristova spoke about LIK’s editorial concept. Lozanov said the issue was difficult because “on one hand, it is dedicated to the anniversary of the National Literary Museum, but the literary museum is an institution of the history of literature, so this issue is really about the history of literature.” He noted that “the history of literature has its own heroes, the writers themselves,” and that a literary work “does not remain in the past. It continues to live on and is part of the present,” which makes literary history different from conventional historical narratives and museum space. Hristova explained that the opening page contains a chronology starting from 1945, where “the first news item recounts how Nikolay Liliev was appointed to the National Theatre’s artistic council.” She points out that “there are numerous news items about the Ivan Vazov House Museum, its restorations, renovations, and the visits of various guests to the room once inhabited by Vazov,” underlining how BTA’s own archive underpins the issue.
Skopje and readers in North Macedonia were also in focus. At the launch of the November LIK issue there, literary critic Dusko Krstevski observed that “readers in North Macedonia are more interested in contemporary Bulgarian writers than in earlier authors.” He is among those who have helped popularize authors such as Georgi Gospodinov, Alek Popov, Zdravka Evtimova, Alexander Sekulov, Kalin Terziyski and Milen Ruskov. Krstevski talks about the contacts built at the summer seminar on Bulgarian language, literature and culture in Veliko Tarnovo, in which he participated for eight years, and about the Corridor 8 podcast, “through which viewers on both sides of the border discover and discuss the work of Dimitar Talev, who is also little known in North Macedonia.” The Skopje event also underlined that the November LIK issue, published by the Bulgarian News Agency with the support of the BTA National Press Club in Skopje, is devoted to the same theme of Literature and Memory.
The perspective of the National Literature Museum was presented by Deputy Director Sonya Kiritsova at the Sofia presentation. Kiritsova described the museum as “the bridge between the literary past and the literary present” that “successfully corresponds with today’s digital reality, handling all the challenges of the fast-paced and intensive times.” Kiritsova thanked BTA for the inaugural event with which, starting in January, the museum will launch its celebrations for its 50th anniversary, and cited Director Atanas Kapralov’s words from the issue: “The museum is a living institution; it is not frozen in time. It is neither merely an archive or a storage facility, nor simply a place where literary artifacts are kept, waiting for visitors to come, look at them, and leave.”
She noted that for nearly 50 years the museum has been a pillar of literary memory and is now asserting its future role as both a classical and a modernized institution. She mentioned that “the Hristo Smirnenski House Museum, which had been in dreadful condition, has been restored and has now become a wonderful cultural centre,” and that “the effort to return the Peyo Yavorov House Museum from private ownership to the State was brought to a successful conclusion.” Three projects funded by the Ministry of Culture have been implemented, including conservation and restoration of works of art in the Petko and Pencho Slaveykov and Peyo Yavorov house-museums. The permanent exhibition at the Ivan Vazov House Museum has been updated and “is now bilingual, so that the many foreign visitors can also connect with Ivan Vazov. An audio guide will also be introduced – something entirely new for our institution.” In conclusion, Kiritsova announced that the National Literature Museum is preparing a literary history and memory award, Slovoslov, “which will be presented to individuals who have dedicated their lives to literature.”
/КТ/
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