Geschichten vom Schwarzen Meer - Black Sea Lit

Lavinia Branişte was born in 1983, in Brăila. She studied foreign languages ​​in Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest. Her first book, published in 2006, was a collection of poems – Povești cu mine/Stories with me. It was followed by the collections of short stories Cinci minute pe zi/Five Minutes a Day (2011) and Escapada/Escapade (2014). Lavinia Braniște is the author of the novels "Find me whenever you want" (2021), "Sonia raises her hand" (2019) and "Interior zero" (2016), the latter translated into German, Polish and Spanish and adapted for the stage in Romania (Centrul Replika) and Germany (Freies Werkstatt Theater Köln). Lavinia wrote texts for two theatre plays, "Dreaming of Voices" (d. Nicoleta Lefter) and "Exeunt" (d. Bobi Pricop), and for the most recent film directed by Vlad Petri, "Between Revolutions", awarded this year's FIPRESCI prize in the Berliale Forum section. 

Bogdan Coșa (b. 1989) published “Poker”, the first novel of his debut trilogy, after winning the Prize for Debut awarded by Cartea Românească Publishing House in 2011. In 2013 Cartea Românească published his poetry book, „O formă de adăpost primară” / “The Simplest Form of Shelter”, and the second part of his trilogy, “Black Glass” (The Young Prose Writer of The Year 2013). „Ultraviolență” / “Ultraviolence”, the last volume of the trilogy, was published in 2017 at Polirom Publishing House. The novel „Cât de aproape sunt ploile reci” / “How Close the Cold Rains Are” (Trei Publishing House) won the Prize for the Best Book of Prose in Romania in 2021. Also in 2021 he published his first children’s book, „Ziua în care Adam a devenit băiat bun” / “The Day Adam Became a Good Boy”. 

Eka Kevanishvili was born in Tbilisi in 1979. In 2002, she graduated from the local State University with a master’s degree in international journalism and has since worked as a radio, print, and video reporter. Since 2008, she has worked as a permanent journalist in the Tbilisi office of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, covering domestic politics, social and health issues, human rights, minority issues, to name a few. She has also worked as an investigative journalist for several leading Georgian newspapers.  

Eka Kevanishvili is the author of seven books, including four volumes of poetry, one volume of short stories, and one volume of essays and interviews. 
The lyrics of Eka Kevanishvili’s first poetry collection »Rumor« (2006) explore a mixture of erotic poetry and rebellion, which is why she was compared to Anne Sexton at the time. Her next collection »Don’t Stand Here« (2010) takes on social issues and war. Here, Eka Kevanishvili’s poetic style, later classified as urban poetry, was clearly formed. »Selling The House« (2013) is a collection of political poems, with feminism also being a theme. Her poetry has been described by critics as contemporary in the best and specific sense of that word, as it is mainly devoted to social issues, gender issues, the modern world, global and private wars.

Archil Kikodze is a writer, actor, wildlife guide, photographer and birdwatcher, Archil Kikodze stands out as one of the major names of contemporary Georgian literature. He graduated from Tbilisi State University, department of Oriental Studies. Later he mastered the profession of cameraman and screenwriter at Tbilisi State Institute of Theatre and Cinema.  

Kikodze started writing in the late 90-ies and for almost twenty years he was actively working on short stories and guidebooks. His first novel The Southern Elephant was published in 2016 and was followed by an immense public success and recognition. In his literary works A. Kikodze is able to perfectly demonstrate visible and invisible attraction of Georgian people. Dialogues between generations, traveling, looking for answers to questions – those are the main topics that the author covers in his literary works and writings.  

Anush Kocharyan is a writer, cultural journalist and Art Manager from Armenia. 
In 2012 she was granted a MA in Journalism at Yerevan State University. She is the Alumni of the International Visitor Leadership Program (U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program, IVLP)․ She is the General Manager of Hover State Chamber Choir, General Producer of “Saghsara” documental-musical and cultural project, Chief Advisor at “Loft” self-development centers, Editor-in-Chief and Lecturer at 4Plus Documentary Photography Center. 

Anush Kocharyan is one of the writers of “ARI” literary agency, member of Pen Armenia, winner of 2014 EURODRAM European network for drama in translation (France), 2nd place (Encouragement Prize) winning playwright at 2015 literary contest of the Nuremberg State Theatre, one of the winners of “Poetry” nomination at 2018 Yerevan Book Fest, participant of LIT: Potsdam literary festival (Germany). 

“Wild Grass” is the first book of Anush Kocharyan, which was published in 2022. The book includes the poems of the author written from 2012 to 2022. The poems included in the book have been translated into different languages, presented during various festivals. Since 2013 Anush Kocharyan has been working on her novel, which presents post-Soviet Armenia’s first “independent” generation’s life and coexistence with the independence, as well as traumatized memory and occurrences. The novel is documentary-fictional. 

Halyna Kruk (1974) is an award-winning poet and prose writer, translator, and scholar from Lviv, Ukraine. She is the author of five books of poetry, An Adult Woman (2017), Co(an)existence (2013), The Face beyond the Photograph (2005), Footprints on Sand  and Journeys in Search of a Home (both 1997), collection of short stories Anyone but me (2021), and four books for children. Her Marko Travels Around the World and The Littlest One have been translated into 15 languages. She is a winner of numerous literary awards in Ukraine, among them The 2023 Women in Arts Award, The 2022 Kovaliv Fund Prize for her proze book Anyone but me,  The Best Book Award of BookForum 2021, Smoloskyp Poetry Award, Bohdan Ihor Antonych Prize and “Hranoslov” Award.

Her works have been translated into many languages, her latest book of poems A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails  has just appeared in English translation in U.S.Halyna Kruk is a co-creator of multimedia projects, including: a project The BookWar (in collaboration with electronical musician Yurko Yefremov, and ethnic singer Halyna Breslavets (2021)) and the poetry and music performance The Resistance of Matter (2016). Halyna Kruk holds a PhD in Ukrainian baroque literature (2001). She is a member of the Ukrainian PEN.  She lives in Lviv and teaches European and Ukrainian baroque literature at the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv.  

Armen Ohanyan (b.1979; pen name Armen of Armenia) is a fiction writer, essayist and literary translator. He holds a BA in philosophy from Yerevan State University and the graduate certificate in Translation (CTRA) from American University of Armenia.  He is the President of PEN Armenia Center since 2017. He is known for his short story collection The Return of Kikos, published in 2013. His short story Who Wants to Be a Millionaire appears in 2015 edition of Best European Fiction collection by Dalkey Archive Press. His writing is significantly influenced by his political activism. In 2015 he has participated at City of Asylum Writer Residency program in Pittsburg, PA, USA as well as the Fall Residency at the widely acclaimed International Writers’ Project at the University of IOWA at Iowa City, IA, USA. 

Ostap Slyvynsky is a literary scholar and poet, born in Lviv in 1978. In 2000, he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the National Ivan Franko University in Lviv, majoring in Bulgarian language and literature. His dissertation (2007) looks at the phenomenon of silence in the literary text using Bulgarian prose from the 1960s to the 1990s. Until 2018, he published five volumes of poetry, which, like his critical articles and essays, have been translated into sixteen languages.

Literary critic Kostyantyn Moskalets said, “Slyvynsky’s poetry is full of clearly drawn details – and a pietism to the detail. They are fundamentally non-trivial, though they spring from everyday life.” 

For his translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s “Jacob’s Books”, he received recognition from the UNESCO City of Lviv Literature Prize in 2020. He is a co-editor of the bilingual Ukrainian-Bulgarian anthology “Ukrainian Poetic Avant-Garde” (2018). He also edited the online anthology of modern essays “The Ark Named Titanic: 20 Essays about Humanity of AD 2020” (2020), and the anthology of Ukrainian war poetry “Between the Sirens” (2023). 
Ostap Slyvynsky is a Vice President of the Ukrainian PEN and has worked at the Department of Polish Philology at the Ivan Franko University in Lviv, where he lives, since 2004. 

Ina Vultchanova is a journalist, writer, producer and translator from French and Russian. She has an MA in Bulgarian philology from the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski.

Her professional career has been dedicated to the art of audio drama. She has worked as a long-time senior producer at the Drama Department of the Bulgarian National Radio and has produced numerous audio adaptations of works by world authors and Bulgarian writers. Audio productions of hers won the Croatian Grand Prix Marulich in 1998, the Second Prix Europe in Berlin in 1998 and the Eighth Muse Prize in Sofia in 2006. 

Her first novel, The Sinking of Sozopol  was  filmed in 2013 and  in 2014  Vulchanova  was  awarded the National Golden Rose Prize for the film script;  in 2015 the film won the Best Foreign Film award of the New York City International Film Festival and the Best Ensemble Cast award at the Milano Film Festival ;  in 2016 it received the Grand Prix of the Prague Independent Film Festival.  
Her third novel The Crack-up Island won the Razvitie Corporation Literary Contest for unpublished Bulgarian novels in 2016. In 2017 The Crack-up Island won the EUPL . 

Lisa Weeda (1989) is a hybrid multitransimmersive-media writer, teacher and artist. She published the novella De benen van Petrovski at Wintertuin Uitgeverij in 2016, created the photobook OSELYATA (with Robin Alysha Clemens, 2018), and directed and wrote the screenplay of the roomscale VR-work ROZSYPNE (STUDIO ZZZAP, 2019), that was nominated in the 2019 IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction. In 2020 she was granted the C.C.S. Cronestipendium. Her novel ALEKSANDRA was launched October 2021 and has received much critical acclaim.