MARGARITA DOGRAMADZHYAN

MARGARITA DOGRAMADZHYAN was born in 1956 in Plovdiv, the city of the seven hills, the famous artists'society and the second biggest library in Bulgaria. Probably its atmosphere, the result of thousands years of culture and tradition, has something to do with her love for literature.

In 1974 she graduated from the Plovdiv English Language School, well known for its high criteria and excellent teachers. Since she was dreaming of becoming a journalist, she decided first to try herself at writing for the local youth weekly newspaper and had her pieces published there every week for a period of two years. There she met the young but now already established author Marko Markov. It was him, who, ten years later, encouraged her to start translating for the Trakia literary magazine. She had already graduated from the School of Librarians in Sofia and the Paisii Hilendarski University in Plovdiv and she was working in the Ivan Vazov Library. That was how her translator's career began, and continues to this day. So far she has translated about 50 titles, among which novels, children's literature, popular encyclopedias and specialized books.

She got to know the novel The White Tiger by the Man Booker prize winner Aravind Adiga thanks to the publisher Manol Peykov (Janet 45 Print and Publishing), who asked her to translate it after she had been recommended to him by her translation guru Zheni Bozhilova. For its translation in Bulgarian, Margarita won the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation's Krastan Dyankov Award (2010).