About

Rostislava Pankova-Karadjova, known to her friends as Ronnie, is a bilingual writer and musician. She wrote her first poem at 13, then poured her thoughts into diaries and her emotions into more poems, some of which were published. After graduating from the Bulgarian Music Academy with degrees in Musicology and Choir Conducting, in 1992 she moved to Swaziland, Southern Africa, and twelve years later — to Auckland, New Zealand, where she lives with her family. The challenges of adopting a new language and two different cultures, and her daily tasks as a music teacher, choir conductor and a mother, silenced her pen for nearly twenty years.

Her blog Между два свята (Between two worlds) revived her inspiration and her hobby grew into passion, writing both in Bulgarian and English. She enrolled in online creative writing courses, including Writing Fiction Intermediate from the University of East Anglia & Writers Centre Norwich. In 2022, having navigated pitfalls of self-doubt and peaks of exuberant joy, Ronnie received her Master of Creative Writing degree from the University of Auckland, an achievement that has hushed many of her inner demons, the biggest being writing in her non-native tongue.

Ronnie’s flash fiction and short stories have been awarded and shortlisted in the UK Writing Magazine, the New Zealand Writing College, Flash500, Brilliant Fiction and other competitions. Her stories have been published in MiNDFOOD, Flash Frontier, Fiction Attic Press, Ponder Review, Syncopation Literary Journal. You can find more of her translated poems, flash fiction and stories inspired by music on Substack.

Ronnie is a recipient of CLNZ Creative Writing Tertiary Scholarship Her debut novel In Focus was awarded the NZSA 2023 Manuscript Assessment and is currently out on submission, represented by High Spot Literary.

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