Kassabova, Kapka

[Photograph: Jan Kemp (2002)]

Kapka Kassabova (b. 1973)

Contents:

New New Zealand Poets in Performance (2008):

Preparation for the big emptiness
One morning like a sleeper
My life in two parts
A city of pierced amphorae

Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive (2004):

CD20

1. Preparation for the big emptiness
2. Nothing that you can take
3. Mirages
4. One morning like a sleeper
5. My life in two parts [1-2]
6. The Complete Circle
7. Amnesia at Eaglereach
8. A city of pierced amphorae

Bio / Bibliography:

Kapka Kassabova is an Auckland poet, novelist, reviewer, journalist, and travel writer. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, she emigrated with her family to New Zealand at eighteen when her father was offered a teaching position at the University of Otago. Upon arriving in Dunedin, Kassabova immediately enrolled at the University of Otago, from which she graduated with a BA (hons.) in French in 1996. While at university, Kassabova wrote her first poems in English, her fourth language (she had been writing poetry in Bulgarian since she was eight); some of these would be published in her first collection, All Roads Lead to the Sea (1997). After receiving her degree, Kassabova left Dunedin and enrolled in the Creative Writing programme at Victoria University, Wellington. (She graduated with an MA in 1998.) While there, she wrote the poems published her second collection, Dismemberment, and began working on her first novel, eventually published as Reconnaissance (1999). Since then, she has published a further novel, Love in the Land of Midas (2000), and a third collection of poems, Someone Else’s Life (2003).

Kassabova was awarded a Sargeson Fellowship in 1999; in 2000, Reconaissance received the Commonwealth Prize for best first book in the South East Asia/Pacific region. In 2003, she was awarded the Creative New Zealand Berlin Residency. She currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Auckland, and writes regularly for magazines and newspapers.

Poetry:

All Roads Lead to the Sea, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997
Dismemberment, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1998
Someone Else’s Life, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2003

Novels:

Reconnaissance, Auckland: Penguin, 1999
Love in the Land of Midas, Auckland: Penguin, 2000