Vili Koleva has published her first poetry collection, "A Place for a Sunny House", and Roza Boyanova edited it, the two told Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) in Burgas. Boyanova presented the book at its launch during the "Autumn Literary Festival" in Burgas.
The collection has poems written over the past 10 years. Reviewer Petar Chuhov gave it its title.
The poems are grouped in four cycles. The first, "Windows Full of Time", is about time. "I see time as linear and as cyclical, but also as the time inside us, as a deep feeling we have," Koleva said.
Next come "Reason for a Missing Frame" and "Six Ships, One Horizon". In the third cycle, the author writes about being a child to her parents and about her philosophy of life. The last, "Directions of Daily Life", gathers thoughts from the road and sparks from everyday life.
Koleva and Boyanova also worked together on the children's book "Dragon Houses. Children Tell About Strandzha". It has 22 tales and 11 colour illustrations, laid out like a bright mosaic. The authors are children aged 9 to 17.
The idea came from the "Lyuben Karavelov 1940" chitalishte (community cultural centre) in Burgas, and the money came from the National Culture Fund. The children took their inspiration from Strandzha and from an art workshop in Malko Tarnovo. They write and draw about the ancient stones, dolmens and menhirs.
The children come from three chitalishte groups. Boyanova is an art teacher at the "Mythical Birds" Literary Studio at the "Lyuben Karavelov 1940" chitalishte in Burgas. The young illustrators come from the Drawing and Applied Arts Studio at the "Prosveta 1927" chitalishte, where Koleva teaches. The third group is children from the "Georgi Popayanov 1914" chitalishte in Malko Tarnovo, led by Milena Drencheva. These children both write and illustrate in the book.
Boyanova said the dragon houses, as the children call the dolmens, impressed them most. They found them in the forest and had their photos taken in front of them. Some peered inside, which was a little scary, she said. The houses are small, but in a child's imagination they lead to a huge other world.
"If you look into this house, you step into another world, which is huge, and you can get lost," Boyanova said.
At the "Autumn Literary Festival" in Burgas, Burgas journalist and writer Diana Fartunova also presented her book "Sketches in Pen and Brush", with poems and watercolours about the four seasons, as we reported on 2 November.
Some of the tales are about this other world. In others, the heroes meet a baby dragon, and in still others they look for an explanation of how the dragon houses exist.