Joanna Elmy is a Bulgarian-born writer and journalist. She is among Bulgaria’s most prominent young literary voices. Her debut novel, written during her years in university, received the most prestigious Bulgarian prize for emerging literature in 2022 and was shortlisted for several other national awards. She is a columnist in Deutsche Welle and works for the independent weekly Toest. Her literary criticism and essays have appeared in The Literary Journal, VIJ Magazine, Capital Weekly and other national newspapers and magazines. Elmy was the recipient of the Per Aspera ad Astra scholarship for literature and became an Elizabeth Kostova Foundation fellow in the 2019 edition of the Sozopol writing seminars. She lives between the United States and her native Bulgaria, where she is the founder of a project aiming to modernize the Bulgarian literary canon and to improve access to literature and literary knowledge. She has degrees in International Relations and English from the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and a MSc in Political Communications from the University of Amsterdam.