University Archive

Atanas Slavov

He was born in Sliven on July 25, 1930. He graduated from high school in Sofia, and in 1953 he graduated from the Sofia University in English Philology.

Between 1953 and 1965 he took courses in Russian language, worked as a librarian, participated in radio programs. Between 1961 and 1971 he conducted a seminar on English Literature at Sofia University.

In 1965 he completed his PhD thesis on "Functions of Rhythm in Artistic Verse Speech" at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 1966–1976 he studied at the Institute of Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he founded a design section and participated in a problem group for the study of Bulgarian applied arts. As Secretary of the Scientific Project "Basic Principles of World Culture to 2000" at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, he traveled to the United States, where he worked in the Department of International Research and Exchange in New York in 1975-1976. In 1976 he settled in the USA.

Atanas Slavov is author of poems, fiction, art studies, books for children, scripts for animated pictures, documentaries and feature films. He is also translator from English to Bulgarian.

After leaving Bulgaria he was convicted by the Communist regime as a non-returner. He has worked abroad as a freelance writer on Radio Free Europe and BBC Radio, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington State Department and Radio "Voice of America" as a screenwriter, editor and speaker.

In the USA, he writes his memoirs, creates a publishing house and manages to create a connection with American writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Graham Greene. He devotes some of his time to studying Peter Dunov's life and teachings.

After 1989 Atanas Slavov returned to Bulgaria and published many of his books written abroad. During life, he donates his archive to the NBU.

Atanas Slavov died on December 4, 2010.

 

Atanas Slavov donate his archive to the University Archive in 2004.

Biographical data can be found in one of his student books for the 1945/1946 school year, when Atanas Slavov was still in high school, as well as in several of his student notebooks.

The fund is "abundant" with evidence of his exceptional creative productivity - manuscripts of his books and drafts of his poems, literary articles and studios, scripts for feature and animated films. Also, it is important to note the manuscripts reflecting Slavov's work as a translator.

Family correspondence reflects the difficult time since the writer left for the United States.

Far more feasible are the written links that Slavov maintains with writers and journalists of Bulgarian origin in emigration such as Georgi Markov, Petar Uvaliev, Georgi Slavov, Hristo Ognyanov and many others.

Letters from and to American institutions are stored in Atanas Slavov's personal fund. Commercial correspondence has also been retained in connection with his Sliabhair publishing house.