by Stoyan Vassilev, winner of the 2012 MRBA

 

"Stoyan Vassilev is a rare, beautiful writer. His fiction is wise and engaging and seasoned with feeling and thought. He is at the nucleus of why we read fiction."—contest judge and acclaimed author Frederic Tuten

​

"Here are stories from the 'other' Europe, a Europe in the grip of incomprehensible politics and Slavic melancholy. But there is a new development: Hope. Stoyan Alexandrov Vassilev asks us, What should we do with our history? Abandon it? Burn it? Befriend it? Yes to all of these, and also transform it into a book of remarkable stories."—author Robert Glück

​

Stoyan Vassilev was born in 1979 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He arrived in the USA in 1998. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2003 and a Master's Degree in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2005. He is an MFA candidate of creative fiction at San Francisco State University. He was the winner of the New Beginnings Web Contest at Scribophile in 2010, the recipient of the Miriam Ylvisaker Fellowship in 2011, and the winner of the Michael Rubin Award in 2012. He lives in Boulder Creek, rural California, with his wife, baby, and two golden retrievers. 

​