I'm Not Going Anywhere

Rumena Bužarovska is a fiction writer and literary translator from Skopje, North Macedonia. Bužarovska’s short stories have been translated into several languages. “Waves” and “Lily” appeared in Best European Fiction 2016 and Contemporary Macedonian Fiction respectively, both published by Dalkey Archive Press. My HuHer most recent collection My Husband was published by Dalkey in 2020. Bužarovska teaches literature at the State University in Skopje. Steven Edgar Bradbury is a recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, and two Henry Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships. His translation of Hsia Yu's Salsa (Zephyr Press, 2014) was shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Prize, and His Days Go by the Way Her Years (Anomalous Press, 2013), a chapbook of the poetry of Ye Mimi, was a finalist for both the Lucien Stryk Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. Bradbury taught poetry, translation, and American literature for 18 years at the National Central University in Taiwan, and has published over 250 translations in journals and anthologies. Bradbury lives in Ft. White, Florida, near the headsprings of the Ichetucknee River.

“Bužarovska belongs to the highest ranks of contemporary women writers—here I think it’s completely justified to appraise her in the global context and to place her side by side with the most renowned, say, English-speaking authors like Alice Munro, although this young Macedonian author, of course, has a lot of writing to do before being compared to a body of work of this extent, but the thing is you can clearly see how she could do it, that type of material is here—brought to light by the dark, carefully shaded places of foremostly human, not exclusively female existence, in such a way that the reader is at the same time necessarily frightened and thrilled by what’s in front of them: first because of what they recognize in themselves and those close to them, and secondly because . . . let’s say because it has never been brought to light in that way.”—Teofil Pančić, Globus