Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
21 August 2008
My
wonderful agent
Sorche Fairbank responded to my original query within hours after I'd sent
it. She loved the sample story I'd attached and ended her request for a full
like so: A story collection can be extremely tough to sell as a first work,
but if I like the rest as I did this one, I'll make sure we can. Well, she
liked it. But she didn't think the collection was ready to go out. So we
edited stories, I wrote two new ones and the manuscript went out to editors.
We waited. And waited. And then it was rejections. Some people were interested
in a novel, others, like Courtney Hodell at FSG, loved a couple of the
stories, but didn't think the rest were up to that level. All editors
passed. Sorche told me to write some new stories and I wrote three more. We
worked on them, then sent the manuscript out for a new round. Sorche told me
she'd show it to Courtney at FSG again. I thought, yes, right, like FSG have
nothing better to do. And guess what happened!!! FSG rejected us again. Two of
the stories, Courtney said, were too sentimental, though she liked the third
one. But I'd written three other stories in the meantime, and they were, well,
very different, so Sorche said, I'll send them to Courtney again. Really? Come
on! I am a negative person, a person who lacks optimism. I'm Bulgarian. So
when we finally got an offer from FSG, two weeks ago, I was amazed, honored,
humbled. And on the inside, a small part of me, cynical and cocky, was
like... It's about time...
2008 Best American Short Stories
February 2008
My
story "Buying Lenin" is featured in
the
2008 Best
American Short stories. And I'm not even American. Once, seven years
ago, after I'd just arrived in the US, my mother asked me in a phone
conversation if I
thought I could start writing in English any time soon. I told her I'd need at
least ten years to even begin to think about writing in English. She said, Ten
years is too long. Start now. So I did. It felt like I was trying to play the
piano with my fingers broken in at least five places. It doesn't feel quite so
bad now.
My story is in there along with stories from T.C Boyle, George Saunders,
Tobias Wolff. I'm sure you'll find it. It's right after Alice Munro...
Full table of contents.
You can hear Salman Rushdie speak briefly of my story on the Leonard Lopate
Show.
2007 Eudora Welty Prize in Fiction
January 2008
My most sincere gratitude to Bret Lott for seeing promise in my stories when
pretty much no one else did. For years all that I'm getting from literary journals
are rejections (mostly form). As an editor of The Southern Review Bret
published two of my stories and I'm so happy to say that the second one,
"Buying Lenin," was awarded TSR's
2007
Eudora Welty Prize in Fiction "given to the best short story published in
The Southern Review each volume year..." Thank you. It's an honor.