Introducing Emmanuella Hristova, author, award winning artist, and traveller. The Other Crown is available on pre-order.

 

Please introduce yourself to us in about 200 words.

I was born in Oakland, California and grew up in the Bay Area. I’m the third daughter born to Bulgarian parents who immigrated to California shortly before I was born. I began drawing at the ripe age of four and studied the fine arts for five years in high school. There, I received many art accolades including a Congressional award for my piece Boy in Red in 2009. In 2015, I received my Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. I began writing poetry at age twenty-four when I was in graduate school. I earned my Master of Education from the same alma mater in 2017. I spent two years as an English teacher in Richmond, California. During that time, I self-published my first poetry collection: The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder. My poems have been published in For Women Who Roar Issue 2: Power, 365 Days of Covid, and She Rose Issue 3: The Goddess. My second poetry collection The Other Crown is available for eBook pre-order on Amazon and other online bookstores. Currently, I’m writing my second novel while seeking literary representation for my first. I speak English, Bulgarian, Spanish, and now reside in Paris, France, where I’m teaching English and learning French.

 

Please fill out the answers to these Interview questions:

1.      What makes you proud to be a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area?

The Bay Area has such a unique cultural and artistic history. Throughout my life, I’ve been reading works by fellow Bay Area authors like Ursula K. Le Guin, Lemony Snicket, Mark Twain, Philip K. Dick, Isabel Allende, Khaled Hosseini, Amy Tan, and many others. You can see the Bay Area reflected in my own work as well—especially in my upcoming poetry book The Other Crown. The short poetry book has two settings, the Bay Area and Paris. As I traveled between the two cities looking for love and purpose, their respective settings made it into my writing.

2.      What or who inspired you to become a writer?

When I started writing poetry again in my twenties, it was purely an emotional reaction to an extremely turbulent time in my life. However, it was my coworker-turned-writing coach, Maria Ciccone, that turned me into a writer. Not only did she introduce me to National Novel Writing Month (which after participating in a few of those, I was able to finish my first novel), but she also edited my first poetry book The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder prior to publication. She encouraged me to submit my poems to journals, and anytime I faced a publishing rejection, her advice was always the same. “Just keep writing!” she’d say. Even though we now live thousands of miles apart, her voice still plays in my head to this day, anytime I want to give up on myself.

3.      When did you begin writing with the intention of becoming published?

When I wrote my first poetry book The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder, I wasn’t writing a book. I was writing in my diary. The book encompassed nine months of love, heartbreak, death, grief, and feminist reckonings. But after I finished, my poems sat collecting dust in the notebook I wrote them in. It wasn’t until Maria Ciccone introduced me to National Novel Writing Month back in 2017 that I started writing with the intent to be published. I started writing my first novel. A few months later, after encouragement from some of my friends, I published my diary-turned-poetry book. Following the publication of my first self-published work in 2018, I kept working on my novel. As part of that writing process, I also wrote poems that corresponded with the scenes of the novel. However, when I edited the manuscript in 2020 I had to remove them due to the large word count. These poems were left without a home, but they eventually turned into the manuscript of my second poetry book The Other Crown. These I wrote with the intent of publication, and of continuing to share my words with the world.

4.      Did your environment or upbringing play a major role in your writing, and did you use it to your advantage?

I grew up in a very religious environment where we read the Bible a lot. As a matter of fact, I started reading the Bible (starting in the book of Job, mind you) in the third grade. By the time I was in my twenties I had read the whole thing cover to back, five times. I also read novels profusely. Through my extensive reading of the Bible and other books, I developed a sense of effective story devices and purposeful prose. Although I’m not a fundamentalist anymore, the Bible itself does inspire my work in that I often refer to biblical stories or characters as allegories for current-day injustices.

5.      Do you come up with your title before or after you write the manuscript?

Most of the time, I come up with the title before I start writing. In the case of The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder, however, I wrote the manuscript and then the title came to me from two poems and the general format of the book. For my second poetry book, I titled it The Other Crown because it was easily translatable to Bulgarian and sounded cool in both languages. I had touched on fairy tale allegory in my previous work, and I wanted to build on that in my second poetry book.  

6.      Please introduce your genre and why you prefer to write in that genre?

I never chose to be a poet, so I like to say that poetry chose me. What I do enjoy about the genre is the ability to play with language and format. I’m a linguist and an artist so poetry is like the best of both worlds. I make up my own words and break up lines the way I want, essentially manipulating the language as I see fit. Plus, being able to space out the words and lines, and bold certain parts, allows me to create a visually pleasing experience for myself and my readers.

7.      What has been your most rewarding experience with your writing process?

The most rewarding process of my writing journey has been seeing what I’m capable of. I wrote my first poetry book at 24-25 years old and my first novel at 27. Now, at 32 years old, I have 1.5 novels finished and a second poetry book due to be published. I’m still only at the start of my writing career and that exhilarates me!

8.      Have you had a negative experience in your writing career? If so, please explain how it could have been avoided.

All writers have had plenty of negative experiences in their writing careers. Looking back at it, I should have taught myself more social media marketing from the beginning. I’m learning now, but I feel like I’ve missed out on five years of just posting random content and hoping that it worked in promoting my book. I could have been more strategic and consistent this whole time. Now, it’s almost like I’m starting from scratch.

9.      What has been your most rewarding experience in your publishing journey?

My most rewarding experience has been publishing my first poetry book, and being able to hear from readers who bought my work and were touched by my words. It’s what allowed me to keep going despite not seeing the initial success I wanted to.

10.  What’s one positive piece of advice would you give to other authors?

As my writing coach Maria would say, “Just keep writing!”

11.  Who is your favorite author?

I really look up to Georgi Gospodinov. He’s the most famous contemporary Bulgarian author and he writes magical realist novels about life in Bulgaria post-communism. His work is ethereal and touches on things Bulgarians and other Europeans feel in both a personal and global way.

Purchase links:                                      

The Other Crown eBook pre-orders: Amazon / Books2Read / Barnes & Noble / Play Google Books

The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder eBook: Amazon / Play Google Books / Lulu

Print: Lulu.com

Website Links to connect with the author:

WEBSITE / FACEBOOK / GOODREADS AUTHOR PAGE 

INSTAGRAM / PINTEREST / TIKTOK

Personal Questions:

1.      What is your favorite colour?

Turquoise!

2.      Are you a sweet or savoury person?

Sweet

3.      What time do you write best?

I write best late at night, when the world quiets down and I’m alone with my thoughts.

4.      Favourite music or song?

Pop and rock through the ages. It’s so hard to narrow down a favorite song, but “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” does hit different for me.

5.      How do you manage writer’s block?

I find that my writer’s block is usually due to too much technology use and phone notifications. Going on a walk or even a vacation and limiting technology use almost instantly cures this for me.

6.      What social platform do you enjoy most and why?

I got on TikTok this year (after years of fighting it)…and I love it! I wish I had got on sooner. It’s a great, user-friendly app that I use to share videos of me reading my poetry. There’s a lot of user engagement on there and I feel so satisfied when listeners connect with my words.

7.      What artist’s date do you do where no one else is allowed except writing?

8.      What is next on your To Do List?

Posting another TikTok video before going to bed and maybe emailing some book bloggers to ask if they would ARC review my upcoming poetry book The Other Crown.

9.      Where do you like to go on holiday?

So many places! I’ve really got my eye on Turkey, however. I’m Bulgarian, so I love the food, and the proximity has always intrigued me.