Joanna Elmy

Joanna Elmy is a Bulgarian-born writer and journalist. She is among Bulgaria’s most prominent young literary voices. Her debut novel received the most prestigious Bulgarian prize for emerging literature in 2022 and was shortlisted for several other national awards. The book is forthcoming in English (Faber, UK), French (Le Bruit du Monde), German (Ullstein Verlag), Dutch (De Bezige Bij), Norwegian (Cappelen Dam), Portuguese (Dom Quixote) and others.

Elmy was the recipient of the Per Aspera ad Astra scholarship for literature and became an Elizabeth Kostova Foundation fellow in the 2019 edition of the Sozopol writing seminars. She lives between the United States and her native Bulgaria, where she is the founder of a project aiming to modernize the Bulgarian literary canon and to improve access to literature and literary knowledge. In March 2024 she was selected as European Literary Map of London inaugural Writer in Residence, an initiative supported by the UCL European Institute, UCL Arts and Humanities, and the European Writers’ Festival.

Joanna is a columnist in Deutsche Welle – Bulgaria and VIJ cultural magazine, and works as an author and project manager at the independent Bulgarian weekly Toest. Her journalistic work focuses on communication and international politics, with a preference for the long form and a more literary, human-centered approach to journalism. Her literary criticism, interviews and essays have also appeared in The Literary Journal, Capital Weekly and other national newspapers and magazines. In her capacity as a researcher, she has been a part of several international projects focusing on media and countering disinformation, including work as a consultant researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).

She has degrees in International Relations and English literature and history from the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, and a MSc in Political Communications from the University of Amsterdam.

She is represented by Laurence Laluyaux at RCW Literary Agency.