A starry book launch at Sofia Live Club

Zhenata, koyato sprya da tseluva zhabi (The Woman Who Stopped Kissing Frogs) is a book about women and their extraordinary inner worlds.

About everything they feel but don't always say. About the loves that change them, the disappointments that make them stronger, and their ability to find meaning even in the most absurd situations. It's the literary debut of Sonya Slavcheva, published by Knigomania: a distinctly female world where love, disappointment, hope and laughter exist side by side, just as they do in life. Slavcheva is a graduate of Yana Borisova's Academy of Creative Writing and Art Training, and Borisova also edited the book. With imagination, irony, humour and a keen sensitivity,

Sonya Slavcheva turns familiar human experiences into unexpected literary images.

In her world, a frog is never just a frog. A star given as a gift has a life of its own, calories can be shut away in jars, and the sea has a secret season that appears on no calendar. Her heroines are funny, vulnerable, contradictory and brave, sometimes helpless in the face of their own feelings. They love, make mistakes, dream, feel afraid and keep looking for themselves. Not because they don't know who they are, but because a woman can become someone different at every stage of her life.

Writing about her former student’s debut, Yana Borisova says: “Sonya found that courage. She has it. She creates it. She knows how to turn the unspoken into a story, and emotion into something tangible.” The launch of The Woman Who Stopped Kissing Frogs takes place

on 9 November at 7.30pm at Sofia Live Club.

Taking part are Militsa Gladnishka, Darin Angelov, Petar Antonov, Velina Georgieva, Yana Borisova and maestro Milen Kukosharov. Admission is free.

Anastasia Stoeva presents her new book, Found Things

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