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At the Lanier Library Annual Meeting on Sunday, May 7, at 3 p.m., NY Times best-selling author Elizabeth Kostova will talk about her passion in writing her three books, preview her novel in the works and share the mission of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing in Bulgaria.

 

Elizabeth finished her debut novel, “The Historian,” after 10 years of research and writing. The labor was rewarded with a listing as a #1 New Times bestseller and acclamation from the Denver Post as “hypnotic.” 

 

The Associated Press wrote “stunning” about her second book, “The Swan Thieves.” Author Ron Rash describes her latest book, “The Shadow Land,” as “a profound meditation on how evil is…defeated.” 

 

“My father was a professor in urban planning,” says Elizabeth. “When he taught in Slovenia, my childhood experience in that medieval world changed my life forever. I wrote ‘The Historian’ for myself because I enjoyed researching Vlad the Impaler and for my father who told me Dracula stories when I was a child.”

 

For “The Swan Thieves,” she researched psychiatry and French Impressionism to create a historical novel with an art vandal as a central character who refuses to speak. According to Elizabeth, “The Shadow Land” was a novel that if unwritten would have left a gap in her life. The story delves into the horrors of a century and the culture and landscape of Bulgaria. 

 

Her husband is Bulgarian and her time there motivated the co-founding of her foundation.

 

Admission is free to the public thanks to support from the Kirby Endowment Fund at the Polk County Community Foundation. The meeting will take place at Tryon Fine Arts Center, located at 34 Melrose Ave., in Tryon, and a reception follows next door at the Lanier Library. For more information, call (828) 859-9535 or visit www.thelanierlibrary.org.

 

Submitted by Vincent Verrecchio