I am a poet and writer of narrative prose. At the core of my work is a quest for transformative encounter with places and people. Margins, confluences, aftermaths – those are my places. In the last decade I have created a body of work which organically grew into the Balkan quartet. Each book takes me into a region of the southern Balkans in, and bordering, Bulgaria. These are rich human and natural ecosystems scarred by political trauma. The first pair are Border (2017) and To The Lake (2020). They explore collective histories. The final pair are Elixir (2023) and Anima (2024). They explore how humans, plants and animals are bound in a vitalising interdependence.
I was born in November 1973 in Sofia to scientist parents and studied at the French Lycée. In 1992, our family emigrated to New Zealand where I studied Linguistics and French Literature at Otago University and English Literature and Creative Writing at Victoria University. I started writing poetry in early childhood. In the first years of life in New Zealand, I moved uneasily from my mother tongue Bulgarian to English as a new literary language. My first published books reflect this fractured state – the poetry collections All roads lead to the sea and Dismemberment, and the novels Reconnaissance and Love in the Land of Midas. This early work was awarded a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and a NZ Montana Book Award.
In 2005 I emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I wrote Street Without a Name (2008). This is a coming-of-age story in the twilight years of Communism and a journey across post-Communist Bulgaria.
Twelve Minutes of Love (2011) blends a tale of obsession with a history of the Argentine tango.
Villa Pacifica (2011) is a novel set in coastal Ecuador and came out at the same time.
My last poetry books are Someone else’s life and Geography for the Lost.
Border (Granta) is a journey with the people and the histories of the triple borderlands of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece.
To The Lake (Granta) delves into the ancestral geography of Lakes Ohrid and Prespa. A personal journey to the roots of my maternal family line became a meditation on conflict and reconciliation.
Elixir (Cape) is a search for collective healing through ultimate presence. The journey took me into a symbiotic web of people and plants along the Mesta River.
Anima, a wild pastoral (Cape 2024) is a tale of extinction and salvation, and a portrayal of the modern transhumance shepherds. It is set on the flanks of Pirin Mountain where I lived with a small pastoral community for a season.
The Insides of Our Lives, a found-footage film by Misja Pekel with my words premiered in 2024 at the Movies That Matter Festival in the Hague.
My books are translated into 20 languages. I remain bilingual with English my primary literary language and Bulgarian second.
I’ve served on the jury panels for the Makedox Documentary Film Festival, le Prix Jan Michalski, the Highland Book Prize, the Neustadt Prize, the 2019 Jihlava Documentary Film Festival, and the International Dublin Book Award. In 2020-2021, I was non-resident Fellow at the Vienna Institute for Human Sciences (IWM).
For the last fifteen years I have lived by the Beauly River in the Highlands of Scotland. In April 2026 I will publish my first book with a Scottish setting, starring my glen: Borrowed Land, a highland story (Cape).
portraits: in glen affric Scotland By Tony Davidson; in paris for editions marchialy by chloe vollmer-lo
Kapka Kassabova 