Georgi Borissov was born on 17 July 1950 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He graduated from the Sofia French College (1969) and from the Moscow Institute for Literature Maxim Gorky (1974). He was editor of the literary newspaper Literaturen Front (1976-1981), Head of the Fiction and Documentary Prose Department of the publishing house Profizdat (1986-1989) and producer at the Fiction and Journalism Department of the Bulgarian National Television (1992 – 1993). Co-founder of the literary magazine FAKEL in 1981, he was first its deputy editor-in-chief before becoming editor-in-chief in 1990. He is the founder and director of the publishing houses FAKEL (1991-1995) and FAKEL EXPRESS (1995). From 2003 to 2007 Georgi Borissov presided over the jury awarding the Helikon literary prize for new Bulgarian fiction. From 2009 to 2016 he was artistic director of the National Theatre Ivan Vazov.
Fakel Express Publishers launched in 2005 together with the publishing house Janet 45 the book series NEW PROSE which published in Bulgarian translation outstanding contemporary Russian authors, selected an edited by Georgi Borissov. Writers such as Vassily Grossman, Vassily Aksyonov, Sergeï Dovlatov, Vladimir Voïnovitch, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Yuri Mamleev, Viktor Erofeev, Evgeni Popov, Anatoli Koroliov, Sacha Sokolov, Edouard Limonov, Ludmila Ulitzkaïa and Mihail Shishkin were thus presented to the Bulgarian reading public.
He is the author of the following books of poetry:
At Noon Sometime at the Beginning (“По пладне някъде в началото”, 1977)
Let Him Be (”Оставете човека”, 1981)
Doors (”Врати”, 1986)
The Stranger (”Пришълец”, 1992)
The Living God (”Живият бог”, 1997)
Carthage (”Картаген”, 2000);
On the Stroke of Three, (“Точно в три”, 2008) ;
What Freedom Told Me, poems and translations of poetry in Russian and Bulgarian (”Какво ми каза свободата/ Что мне сказала свобода”, 2012, Москва, “Центр книги Рудомино”);
Nothing (”Нищо“, 2015) ;
A Smell of Sea (”И замирисва на море“, 2019) ;
Out of Sleep (”Излизане от съня“, 2020) ;
His collection of prose "The Detached Wagon" (”Откаченият вагон“) was published in 2021.
He is also the author of many fiction and non-fiction texts among which Hiatus (“Хиатус”, 2007), co-written with A. Koroliov, of critical literary reviews, essays as well as articles on literature and interviews with outstanding authors among which Bulat Okudzhava, Y. Nagibin, D. Prigov, A. Kuchaev, M. Rozanova, V. Bukovsky, E. Evtushenko, Y. Aleshkovsky, V. Sharov, V. Erofeev, E. Popov, A. Koroliov, M. Shishkin, S. Gandlevski, A. Kabakov, A. Zvetkov, S. Vassilieva, P. Orehovski, Z. Prilepin, Y. Andrukhovich, and more recently Patrick Ourzhednik, Matei Visniec, Grégoire Delacourt and Yasmina Réza) all of them published in outstanding literary magazines.
Georgi Borissov has also translated and published poetry from Russian, French and English (A. Pushkin, A. Blok, V. Khlebnikov, D. Harms, K. Simonov, M. Svetlov, A. Voznesenski, E. Evtushenko, Y. Kuznezov, J. Brodsky, Y. Aleshkovsky).
Borissov’s poetry has been translated in almost all European languages and his poems were included in anthologies of Bulgarian poetry published in Germany, the USA, the United Kingdom and Russia. He participated in many international literary meetings and festivals among which INTERLIT’82 in Cologne, Germany, the European Writers meeting Literary Express 2000, the International Literary Meetings in Struga (2003), the Danube Conference for Art and Culture (2003), the International Poets Meeting in Smedarevo (Serbia, 2004), the International Writers Meeting in Belgrade (2004), The Fourth International Meeting on Translation in Villeneuve Lez Avignon, France (2006), The Days of Bulgarian Culture Balkan Spring in Normandy (2006), The First Open Air International Book Fair in Moscow (2006), The Third International Russian Georgian Festival of Poetry In Quest of the Golden Fleece (2009), The days of Bulgarian Spiritual Culture in Moscow and St. Petersburg (2012), etc. In 2009 he was among the guests of honour of the Moscow Book Fair and in 2019 the Paris Book Fair.
Honours
The National Prize Vladimir Bashev for the best poetry book of the year (1977);
The Great Prize for Poetry The Golden Chain of the newspaper Trud (1999);
The National Prize Ivan Nikolov for the best book of poetry of the year (2001);
The Slaveikov Award for lyrical poetry (2007)
The national prize Milosh Ziapkov for the best book of the year (2009);
The Peter the Great of Russia jubilee medal, awarded by the Federal Press and Mass Communication Agency of Russia (2009);
The Golden Century medal of the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture (2013);
The international prize Russkaya Premia of the Russian Federation and the Boris Yeltsin Foundation for his “contribution to the preservation and development of the traditions of Russian culture outside the boundaries of the Russian Federation” (2015);
The Orpheus Wreath an outstanding contribution to contemporary poetry (2021);
The Great prize Peroto (The Feather) for the contribution of his poetic work to Bulgarian culture (2021)
In 2022, Portal Kultura awarded him the first prize in the category "Humanities" for his book "The Unhinched Wagon" (2021) - "for his prose, which expands the boundaries of Bulgarian literature".
