Team

Venka Ragina is an economist by education and a publisher by passion. She has 25 years of experience and over 600 published books. She is the founder of the Association for Culture and Literature and the Litera Expo festival in Blagoevgrad, which is held annually and has had seven editions. She is a long-time member of the management and supervisory board of the Bulgarian Book Association.

Elena Georgieva is a film producer and cultural manager. Over the years, she has worked for the Cervantes Spanish Cultural Institute–Sofia, the Fortissimo Familia educational program of the Sofia Philharmonic, the association of publishers Bulgarian Book Association, the Northern Lights and So Independent film festivals, as well as for the European association of cinema enthusiasts NISI MASA.

Denitsa Miteva is a Master of Philology and a communications expert. Somewhere along the way, she added a Master of Financial Management to ensure that she prefers the power of words over the value of numbers. She views cross-media strategies as a game of chess, where victory is determined by the truth. She gained her professional experience in leading electronic and print media.

Anton Staykov (1962) is an artist, journalist, researcher, PhD in advertising semiotics, teacher, and lecturer. He is the author of the award-winning books A Brief History of Bulgarian Comics (2013) and The Bulgarian Primer. 200 Years in First Grade (2015), as well as host of the segment The Book as Art broadcast on Bulgarian National Television (2017–2019) and a screenwriter of documentaries. He curates exhibitions in the fields of comics, illustration, and visual arts.

Svoboda Tsekova (1974) is a graphic designer and illustrator. She is engaged in visual research and works for causes related to children’s rights. With her studio format.bg, she creates numerous projects in the field of print and digital media. She is the curator, author and designer of award-winning books and exhibitions, including the A'Design Award (2015) and the Sofia Award for outstanding achievements in the field of culture (2021).

Valentina Stoeva holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Sofia University and a master's degree in Diplomacy and International Relations from New Bulgarian University. Since 2008, she has been actively promoting reading in Bulgaria. She is the founder and chairperson of the Children’s Books Foundation (Bulgaria) and the Reading Foundation (Bulgaria). Additionally, she serves as the Editor-In-Chief of the website detskiknigi.com. Valentina has been appointed as the Libraries’ Ambassador by the Bulgarian Library and Information Association, and she has been honored as a Knight of the Book by the Bulgarian Book Association. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in Theory of Reading at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication, Sofia University. Furthermore, Valentina is a member of EURead and is actively involved in the Communications Team.

Stefan Gadzhovski is an artist and engineer, but beyond that, he has 22 years of experience as a lighting designer in architectural illumination – often called the fourth dimension of architecture. Along with this, he frequently works on spatial and volumetric projects. He founded Bulgaria’s first gallery for Art Toys, Commanda Camp, and before that, he co-founded the Suspatious gallery with his colleagues. He also teaches computer graphics at the National Academy of Art.

Violeta Apostolova is a photographer and artist specializing in print and applied graphics. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of Visual Arts at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, where she researches the interpretation of text in collage. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in fine arts with a specialization in graphics and a Master’s Degree in the semiotics of visual arts from the same university. Her professional focus is photography, with a strong emphasis on portrait photography, where she combines an intuitive approach with a keen eye for visual expression.