Gergana Pancheva is Managing Director of Sofia Literary Agency, established in 2022, the only Bulgarian agency which represents Bulgarian authors internationally. Sofia Literary Agency represents around 30 Bulgarian contemporary writers, literary estates and illustrators. Gergana also initiated and coordinates the Sofia International Literary Fellowship, which reaches its third edition in 2026. Gergana Pancheva is also a translator and a poet. She has won two consecutive prizes in the national literary competition Vesselin Hanchev and in 2021 she published the poetry collection Sled dlanite (Follow the Palms, Janet 45). She graduated from English and American studies and has a Master’s degree in Translation and Editing from Sofia University. Gergana Pancheva attended Bookfest 2026 International Book Fair in Bucharest, where Bulgaria was guest of honor.
You are the Managing Director of Sofia Literary Agency, the only Bulgarian agency dedicated to selling translation rights for Bulgarian authors. During his visit in Romania in 2022, I talked with Manol Peykov, the founder of the agency, about his plans. Back then, the agency was freshly founded. How has it developed, what are its goals and its resources?
Sofia Literary Agency was officially established in 2022. With Manol we started with a modest portfolio of about 10 writers, mainly in the field of fiction. We tried to compile a list of contemporary Bulgarian high-end literary writers who were already acclaimed by the critical reception in Bulgaria, who were already awarded, some of them already translated and published in some countries throughout the years.
We tried to combine voices from different generations, established and newly emerged. Somehow, we also ended up with the ratio of two thirds to one third women to men. This is not intentional, but obviously we focus somehow intuitively on more women’s voices, which is important nowadays, I believe.
Throughout the last years we grew, we are now working with around 30 writers, mainly of fiction, contemporary fiction, we also acquired a few literary estates, because one of my passions is to focus on rediscovered classics, modern classics. Little by little we gathered names like Vera Mutafchieva and Viktor Paskov, Marin Bodakov as well, who is a deceased poet, fundamental for my generation. Also, for the last two years, we have been representing books for children and we have names like Mariya Doneva, Petya Kokudeva, who is published by Arthur in Romanian translation (trans. Lora Nenkovska). And, although I decided not to work with publishers, but to represent writers, I recently acquired the portfolio of a whole publishing house, Totchitza, an indie publisher with very artsy, edgy books. And they also work with the most prominent names of contemporary Bulgarian illustration. They are brave, they are unconventional, they challenge children’s imagination, and it’s going well for now.
The first few years were difficult, but throughout the last two and a half years, we’ve sold more than 200 titles into over 30 languages. The last three years we have had some kind of sustainable model of having 40-50 titles sold per year. And this year we are proud to have about 60 books published in foreign languages. But these have been accumulated since 2023, so it’s not a one-shot show.
It’s uneven, it’s difficult, it’s still a struggle. And what is important here to be said is that we are a private organization sharing ownership with Janet45 Publishing House, so this is a private initiative. And I have big support in terms of a business model, accounting, printing, because Janet45 has two printing companies in Bulgaria and a great team who help the agency every day. So, it’s a bit different, I’m not a freelancer agent. An important part of the whole game here is the work to discover not only great voices in literature, but also new translators and publishers who are eager to work, promote and discover with us. Rene Karabash with She Who Remains, for example is in the works with Alice Books by the translation of Livia Nistor, some of our co-agents like the Kalem Agency in Turkey have put immense effort into this field and keep working on discovering new opportunities for our writers and translators.
How do you select the authors to be included in your portfolio?
I need names who are awarded, first with national literary awards, recognized by readers and the critical reception locally. We focus on literary fiction, we have some poetry, we have some non-fiction, short stories, but we do mainly contemporary literary fiction. We need good stories, we need strong voices. I would never go to something hyper-extraordinary or experimental, although they’re on the stage. I read; I still have little time left to read😊. And sometimes I like a book, but it’s difficult to think how to place it on foreign markets, so that’s how I somehow limit my choice. We like challenges, we like to break the clichés that short stories or poetry don’t sell. That’s not true. And we’ve proven that. When it’s a good collection, when it’s something extraordinary, they do sell.
We’re still very limited in terms of finance and human resources, so I’m very careful and selective. I don’t want to grow and represent 80 names which I cannot help, which I cannot serve properly.
How do you organize the pitching and reading materials to be shared with the foreign editors? Do you have funds for English samples, do you apply for any subsidies for this?
We pay on our own, sometimes translators get very enthusiastic and they do translate without a contract with a foreign publisher, which we don’t really encourage, but it is inspiring. For example, there is this author, Nadya Radulova who has a novel which just hit the shelves in Turkey, and it’s coming in Italian, Greek, German, Arabic. We still don’t have a Polish publisher, but the Polish translator Mariola Mikołajczak fell so much in love with the novel that she made a full translation. Nadya Radulova’s novel Yozhi Lives Hereis not published in Romanian yet, but her poetry collection is, published by Claudiu Komartin at Max Blecher Publishing House.
So, normally, traditionally, we will have a sample of 30 pages for a novel or for a short story collection we will translate 5 or 6 of them. We use every resource like publications and magazines, previous translations. The more full German, English, Italian, French, Spanish translations accumulated, the better. And you see it once you start developing and traveling. For example, last year I was at the book Fair in Madrid, and there you have French, English, Norwegian, Danish publishers who read Spanish. That’s why they are there. Once you have a short story collection or a poetry collection or a picture book in Spanish, it’s easier to access other markets. It’s not only English, the good old English, that matters.
What are the key arguments you use to convince the editors to read the sample, to open that e-mail containing the pitch?
To open that e-mail – a challenge indeed. Well, how to put it, as I don’t want to somehow make our work look less important or less artistic, because we are book dealers. But it’s business. So, when you have to buy bananas or a purse or shoes, you go to the right place, you have a taste. Once you create a network, you pile up some knowledge, some contacts, you know that the buyers, your clients, not the authors, but the publishers, they’ll come to you because they know that you can offer what they’re looking for. I said that in the discussion yesterday at the opening of the German Stand. Agencies most surely need to have a profile. So, if someone is looking for a cookbook or a book in gardening or feng shui, how to order your house, they come to Oana. If someone is looking for self-help, spiritual books, they come to Gergana. They know what to look for at a certain place. With the first books, it was very difficult to find the right publishers, to find the publishers who are eager to take risks. Publishers are hesitant, picky.
Okay, you have Gospodinov, now you have Rene Karabash. But everyone else around, who are still very talented, very worth investing into, still need a push because publishers are financially cautious and need time and investments to translate the novels. And they’re brilliant, really. Elena Alexieva with Vulcan and Ioanna Elmy with Born of Guilt - they’re Bulgarian contemporary women writers published by Trei Publishing House and by Polirom. Both Mr. Stănescu and Mr. Croitoru were... needing time to consider their decisions and jump into the unknown. We talked for years with both of them. Ioanna Elmy is not represented by me, but we have been talking for years about whether they are going to lose money doing this and how we’re going to make them echo somehow in the Romanian readership. Yes, they are brave speakers, brilliant voices. Still, it takes time to make an author successful, recognized, established on a foreign market. Not only translated into a foreign language, but also to become popular and read by the local readers.
Are there any governmental programs which support translation and publication abroad of the Bulgarian literature? How do they work?
The National Culture Fund of Bulgaria has a program called Translation / Adaptation. They open a translation grant call, once per year, to support Bulgarian books being published into foreign languages. They usually support around 30-40 projects, mainly focused on the advance payment for the author and the translation. We used to have previous years when they would also finance travels, touring abroad, print, marketing. Now the budgets are limited.
So, there is this opportunity. Thanks to this opportunity, we’ve had 30 Bulgarian books published in translation last year all over the world. The number of applicants naturally is growing. And we can also take advantage of the opportunity that Traduki offers. Both our countries are members of Traduki. And this is very important for the region, because otherwise, I don’t see a way that we could reach and connect with Bosnia, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia... For example, we have been increasing the number of translations in Serbian and Macedonian languages. So, this is an important tool for us. Bulgaria is also eligible for Creative Europe.
Usually, selling translation rights from a language which is not so widely spoken is more of a passion rather than a business. How do you balance the financial aspect of the agency? Has it turned profitable already?
As I said, financially and structurally, I’m part of Janet45. I’m an independent organization and I also work with writers from other publishing houses, Ciela, Tochitza, other illustrators, because I’ve started representing illustrators as well, and designers, but I am still owned by Janet45. Actually, what happened to us throughout the last years is that we obtained that kind of hidden profit. Once you make noise locally, certain noise with the success of translations and awards, the local audience gets mad about reading that book. Except for Gospodinov, which is a clear case: in 2023, after the Booker Award, the queues for his books in Bulgaria were unbelievable. This was a momentum, crowds went crazy during the Spring Book Fair. So obviously the Bulgarians decided that after someone is internationally recognized, the work is translated, ‘we need to read that’. This inferiority complex in arts and literature comes to us too.
This happened also to Zdravka Evtimova. Ten years ago, one short story called ‘Blood of a Mole’ became part of a literature textbook in the USA. So she produced a lot of noise, Janet45 reprinted, and the short story collection containing this text started selling like a hot cake.
Two years ago, we had a rediscovered classic case with a novel by Vera Mutafchieva called The Case of Cem. Vera Mutafchieva was a historian from the 20th century, and she left a massive legacy of dozens of novels, historic novels. The Case of Cem is a novel about the Ottoman Empire, LGBT, plot about Cem, the sultan, a very thick, historic, serious text that is told from the point of view of witnesses in court. But it also exploits the love affair between Cem and Saadi, the Persian poet. After the translation hit the shelves in the USA and it was toured by Angela Rodel, the Booker-awarded translator of Gospodinov, it made such a huge noise that Janet45 decided to reprint three novels by this author, and they started selling really well.
Now this is happening to Karabash, she’s touring, everyone is crazy about her, about her previous books. So, this works well for us. It’s not the fee you’re taking from the advance payments. You know how authors in our region are paid, and even if they are superstars, you cannot ask for payments like 6 figures numbers, because publishers must survive. So, this might be a model to be thought about. I truly hope we will read more Bulgarian authors in Romania, in Balkan countries soon like the abovementioned Zdravka Evimova, also Hristo Karastoyanov’s novels from the last two decades.
Over the years you attended many book fairs and obtained many book industry related fellowships all over the world. Which of these have been the most important for you and which ones the most challenging?
Actually I had this conversation with cultural workers, with organizers of festivals a few months ago and we had a long discussion whether you should be always going big like focusing on Frankfurt, Bologna book fairs, if you wish Guadalajara or you should also go smart a little because sometimes smaller scale programs, festivals, fellowships are extremely useful in terms of getting to know a market, making connections, because our business is also a people’s business. It’s about building trust, personal relations, learning more about people' taste, what they read, also how they change in terms of publishing decisions, policy and strategy. So I would say the Istanbul Fellowship that takes place usually in February or March has been very useful business-wise because it’s like a bridge between the Arabic market, the Balkans and Europe, between East and West. So it’s useful geographically. The Sharjah Publishers Conference also is, it usually hosts more than 1000 guests, so you have the opportunity to meet the whole world. There are people who don’t go to Frankfurt, they don’t go to London, they go to Sharjah and regional fairs in China, Malaysia, which for someone coming from Bulgaria there’s still a challenge.
Last year I was adventurous and truly honoured to go to the Cairo Book Fair, which is a lively event and it’s very different, it covers the whole Arabic world. The Arabic world is a charming, interesting, vibrant, enriching market, very different from ours. They still approach trade very differently. It’s a huge thing, it’s very impressive and it’s also a school, you’re learning all the time how to adapt and be flexible. I went to the Chennai Book Fair in India, and the program was quite impressive too. I sold a few titles to Tamil. The Bulgarians are hitting the shelves in Indian languages for the first time in history (Tamil, Telugu).
So, Sharjah, Istanbul, Frankfurt of course. Bologna is a must if you do children’s all of the time. London is changing. Throughout the last years I had the feeling that more people are withdrawing from London and going to BolognaBookPlus, which is focused on fiction and non-fiction.
So, the industry is changing. Everything is useful, but, of course, you can’t be everywhere simultaneously, but I would also recommend attending this kind of regional book fairs. It is also very important because you can have different conversations. It’s not always the agenting center and I believe that the shared problem we have is that after London, Frankfurt, big book fairs, people are flooded by emails, samples, follow-ups. And the question to be asked is how you make them open them. Because, okay, you make the connections, you make acquaintances, the schedules, everything and then how they read, how they make an offer? So, sometimes it’s smarter to go smaller, to approach things differently.
Based on your experience, you initiated and coordinated the first and second editions of the Sofia International Literary Fellowshipin 2024 and 2025. How have you managed to put all this together, to obtain the funds, what these fellowships consisted of and what were the echoes of these events locally and internationally?
I am lucky to have support from the Bulgarian Book Association. They built the infrastructure of the first edition with me, then the second edition was again supported by them as partners, but we did it on our own, with Janet45. The two editions were generously and luckily supported by the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria.
What we do is that we offer professional program of two days with panels and an agenting center offering B2B opportunities. Our book fair in December is similar to this one, retail fair, so publishers are usually engaged in selling paper copies, but little by little they’re getting more engaged in B2Bs. Last year for 15 places we had nearly 200 applicants from all over the world.
It’s charming because we cover accommodation, but we cannot cover the flights, and we had people from Mexico and Brazil flying to Bulgaria on their own expenses because they’re curious to get familiar with our market and authors. We try to combine agents, editors, rights managers, buyers, sellers, because I don’t believe in that strategy to have only the people who buy, because this never works for me. The sellers are the people who are more active, more flexible, the ones who move the industry, they push and kick so that things change quickly. So I’m happy to have also the sellers with us. We also have fellowship coordinators. We had the Prague CEEBM coordinator Jitka Hanušová, Alessi Schreiber from the Mediterranean Publishing Fellowship, so I tried to approach the program more vividly to enrich it somehow in terms of professionals. Last year we had nearly 40 people because we managed to fund 20 and the others joined on their own expenses, which was a big compliment for us. Usually when people cover their own expenses to attend a program it means that you’re doing something in the right way.
Let’s see what happens this year. The project is already with the Ministry. I hope someone’s reading it. This year we are joining forces with the ThinkPub crew. ThinkPub is a project with 12 partnering countries from the European Union, focused on e-reading, audio, new tools, AI. From Sofia they’re partners with the Next Page Foundation. I would like to mention the Next Page Foundation as an absolute pillar for my work because this is an organization that has hosted residencies, conferences, trainings, scouting programs for translators from Bulgarian to foreign languages for the last 20 years. Without their work I wouldn’t be able to exist now. Because what they’ve done for creating a community, for raising new names in literary translation is priceless. So we thought that maybe this year we should join forces. Their conference last year, hosted in Sofia, was in November, the fellowship was in December, so a lot of professional talks from the audience and we are not such a huge community to attend. Not only this fellowship is important for our local scene, as we have done miracles with the Burgas Literary Festival, organized by Svetlozar Zhelev, with the residencies and festivals by Elizabeth Kostova and Next Page and it is a whole ecosystem for us already plus the interestingly curated events by the Reading Sofia Foundation.
Which is your favorite book of all time or what has been the most beautiful book you have read recently, but apart from your job as an agent, for pleasure only?
I’m still enjoying Julia Donaldson with my son. We also fancy Petya Kokudeva’s Miss Grumble Zornitsa Hristova’s Sweet Pet Mosquito and Maya Dalgacheva’s books at home. I started reading The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, one of the Booker Shortlisted titles, and I’m struck by this text. I haven’t finished it, but this is pleasure for me.
Maybe I should recommend something from Bulgaria. There is an author I don’t represent, Paulina Georgieva, and she’s part of the CELA project. I truly enjoyed her previous novel called The Simulationa literary exciting book. I had the joy to present this book in Sofia and I met her at a Creative Writing Seminar organized by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. I believe in this writer, a Bulgarian voice, brave Bulgarian voice that is not with me, in my portfolio, but it was a pleasure to go through that novel.
I also liked another Bulgarian writer I don’t represent, Violeta Radkova with her debut novel. I’m not sure I can translate it in English – maybe Our Bed is Made of Greenery, but Violeta Radkova has only one book published by Janet45. It’s a bit of a historic novel, a bit of a family saga with a very vivid, juicy, rich language, with very smart plots, a lot of irony and brilliantly approaching its story development. It reminds a bit of Kapka Kassabova, a bit of the well-established historic novels of the 90s in Bulgaria. But it’s a thing, it’s a discovery for me. I made a statement above about women voices, but we will have a Romanian translation published by Vellant next year of Emanuil A. Vidinski’s wonderful novel Home for Beginners, which I truly enjoyed reading and I hope that we will have more novels soon by Nikolay Terziyski and his masterpiece Stars Under the Eyelids or Chekmo by the talented Momchil Nikolov.
[The interview has been recorded and transcribed.] [The photos are part of Gergana Pancheva’s archive.]
