April 23-25

Literary Talks 2026

 

City Stage
|National Palace of Culture-Underpass|

 

 
Dystopia and Resistance is the theme of the tenth edition of the Literary Talks Sofia Festival, organized by the Reading Sofia Foundation. Special guests will include Irish writer Paul Lynch, winner of the 2023 Booker Prize, and one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Japanese literature — Sayaka Murata.

Literary Talks will feature discussions and readings with Bulgarian authors, a new look at long-published books, a bookstore, a workshop for young people, a performance, and a professional international program involving cultural managers and festival directors from various European countries. Nearly 40 writers, poets, humanities scholars, researchers, actors, and literary managers will take part in the ten public events.
 
 
 
 

Programme

Dystopia and Resistance

This year’s theme will seek to transcend the typical boundaries of the genre, focusing not only on the parallels with reality and the depiction of a world on the brink of collapse, but also on hope. Discussing dystopias in a literary context inevitably leads to conversations in a much more complex interdisciplinary field, where numerous struggles and visions of possible worlds intersect. Using the literary worlds as a lens, the individual events in the festival program and its participants will bring to the table a variety of topics such as social and economic justice, new forms of dictatorship, feminism, climate change, artificial intelligence, and other technological shifts.

About us

4

YEARS

9

LITERARY TALKS SOFIA

>50

EVENTS

>200

PARTICIPANTS

from17

COUNTRIES