Velina Minkoff

VelinaMinkoffPhotoWork­ing lan­guages: Bul­gari­an, Eng­lish, French

Field of work: fic­tion, art his­tory, theat­er, cinema, archi­tec­ture, psy­cho­logy, music

Short bio­graphy: Velina Minkoff was born in 1974 in Sofia, Bul­garia. She holds a BA in Eng­lish from UCLA with a track in Cre­at­ive Writ­ing – Fic­tion, and a Master’s degree in European Stud­ies from the Uni­ver­sity of Ams­ter­dam with a track in European cul­ture and his­tory.

She trans­lated The Love Machine, a nov­el by Amer­ic­an author Jaqueline Susann (Colibri, Bul­garia, 1992) while still a stu­dent at the Eng­lish Lan­guage School in Sofia. That same year, Velina trans­lated from Eng­lish to Bul­gari­an the film script of the Nor­weigan entry in the Inter­na­tion­al Tele­vi­sion Fest­iv­al Zlat­nata rakla (Plov­div, Bul­garia) which won first prize in the youth TV film sec­tion and was broad­cast on Bul­gari­an Nation­al Tele­vi­sion. In 1993, she trans­lated into Eng­lish a radio drama by aspir­ing Bul­gari­an play­wright Pla­men Sta­men­ov, which won the Brit­ish Council’s Inter­na­tion­al Play­writ­ing Com­pet­i­tion and was broad­cast on the BBC World Ser­vice. Later that year, Velina trans­lated Jacintha, a nov­el by Brit­ish author Kath­leen Win­sor (Bard, Bul­garia, 1993.)

While study­ing in the US, Velina col­lab­or­ated with Bul­gari­an artists and musi­cians for the trans­la­tion of poetry for song lyr­ics and con­tem­por­ary art exhib­i­tions. Dur­ing her gradu­ate stud­ies in the Neth­er­lands, she trans­lated into Eng­lish the film sub­titles of Let­ter to Amer­ica (Bul­garia, 2001) by dir­ect­or Iglika Tri­fonova, for its screen­ing at the Noor­delijk Film Fest­iv­al in 2003, where it won the grand prize of the jury.

Velina was selec­ted as a par­ti­cipant in the Trans­lat­ors’ Atelier Work­shop of the Eliza­beth Kostova Found­a­tion for three con­sec­ut­ive years (2013, 2014 and 2015.) In 2015, she trans­lated into Eng­lish What We Don’t Know About Love, a non-fiction psy­cho­logy and com­mu­nic­tion skills best­seller by Bul­gari­an author Milena Dinkova-Rodriguez (Colibri, Bul­garia, 2015.)

Velina lives in Par­is, where she teaches Eng­lish, freel­ances as a trans­lat­or and edit­or and is cur­rently work­ing on a short story col­lec­tion in Bul­gari­an, which will include her own trans­la­tions of stor­ies she ori­gin­ally wrote in Eng­lish.

Selec­ted trans­la­tions:

Con­tact: velinaminkoff@gmail.com