International Booker Prize Winners Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel to Read at King’s College

The Bulgarian author and his translator will discuss a new story collection, published the day before their visit

King’s College will welcome Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov and literary translator Angela Rodel for a talk and reading on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 7 p.m. at the Burke Auditorium in the McGowan School of Business on the College’s campus. Admission is free and open to the public.

Gospodinov and Rodel shared the 2023 International Booker Prize for Time Shelter. Their visit coincides with the October 13 U.S. publication of The Man with Many Names: Stories (Liveright), a collection of stories written over three decades and set largely in and around Bulgaria.

The collection includes “Blind Vaysha,” about a girl who sees the past with one eye and the future with the other. The story was adapted into an animated short film nominated for an Academy Award in 2017. The collection also features Gaustine, an enigmatic character familiar to readers of Gospodinov’s novels.

Gospodinov is a Bulgarian poet, writer, and playwright whose work has been translated into 25 languages. Time Shelter was the first Bulgarian work to win the International Booker Prize. His honors also include the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature and the Angelus Central European Literature Award. He was a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center in 2017–18.

Rodel is a literary translator with degrees from Yale University and UCLA. She received Bulgarian citizenship in 2014 in recognition of her translation work and contribution to Bulgarian culture. Her translation of Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow won the 2016 AATSEEL Prize for Literary Translation and was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award. Rodel lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she serves as executive director of the Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission.

Event Information:
What: Reading and talk with Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel

When: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 7 p.m.
Where: Burke Auditorium in the McGowan School of Business, King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Admission: Free and open to the public