Bulgarian poetess Aksinia Mihaylova won France's prestigious national award for poetry Prix Max Jacob 2020. She received the prize for her collection of poems Le baiser du temps (The Kiss of Time). “At last, good news comes in these sad and insecure days,” Mihaylova wrote on Facebook and added that the awarding ceremony which had to take place in the Centre National du Livre was cancelled due to the declared state of emergency and quarantine imposed because of the coronavirus.  

They say that poets are prophets. At the onset of 2020 we are talking with poet Boiko Lambovski about the future and the chances for restoring the wholeness of the world. Whether poetry is sometimes more real than the reality in which we are living? And if poetry is not an escape, could then our eternal quests be the way out? Poetry is a part of the literary history and of civilisation, but it is also part of our inner yearning, says Bulgarian poet Boiko Lambovski in an interview to ArtSofia.bg.

The world we are leaving to the younger generations is not in good shape and they will have to save it. And they will. Yes, I am optimistic, says Andrea di Robilant, Italian journalist and writer, in an interview to Europost.

Boy Erased gave me a convenient metaphor to talk about sexuality and religion because so much of what was happening to me was a kind of erasure - to say “You don't exist as a gay man, you can't be a gay man because gay people don't exist.”, says Garrard Conley in an interview to Eropost.

At that stage of life, poetry is a force of nature that takes over your entire being, a daily exploration, a metaphorical cyclone, a painful struggle to create your own, instantly-distinguishable and unique poetic world. No mercy!, says poetess Mirela Ivanova in an interview to Europost.

After a gap of one year the Literature Nobel returned on the stage last Thursday with Poland's Olga Tokarczuk and Austria's Peter Handke awarded the 2018 and 2019 prizes respectively, news wires reported. Two Nobels were awarded this year after last yearчs prize was postponed over a scandal. Since then, the Nobel organisation has appointed new members and reformed some of its rules after a rare intervention by its royal patron, the king of Sweden.

The Order of Scorpions is a novel which makes you delve into the unknown, there are many though-provoking moments that take your fancy and many puzzles to which the reader has to find a clue. It may so happen that they will change your life forever, young writer Nadezhda Dineva says in an interview to Europost.

We, humans, appropriate a lot of things - we believe that the only existing form of intelligence is the one we possess, that only we have emotions, feelings and the right to freedom in a world we have usurped. This is such a fallacy, says writer Elena Aleksieva in an interview to Europost.

I don't believe that we, the people, are only evil or only good. Sometimes we may be good, another time we are worse. I am myself this type of a person, says author Dulce Maria Cardoso in an interview to BTA.

Wisdom is something very different form information; it is very different from knowledge too. Wisdom is related not to the existential question “what” but rather “how”. How can we become better citizens, friends and people? I hope that my new book can somehow contribute to the revival of this kind of philosophy of wisdom. This is the role that philosophy used to have and should have - once again - in people's lives, journalist and author Eric Weiner says in an interview to BTA.