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Literary critic and historian, translator, journalist, editor and
publisher, SvetlozarZhekov is genuinely bound up with the culture of altering
Bulgaria. Co-founder (together with Stefan Savov and Alexander Shourbanov) of one ofthe first clubs for democracy – the one within the
Bulgarian Translators' Union, he takes a committed and active part in the
democratization of the country and its culture. As director of the
National Book Center (1997–1999) he has exerted serious efforts in establishing
an effective dialogue between the Government and the book community in
Bulgaria: he organized two national conferences dedicated to the problems in
the book sector; he presented both to the Government and the book community his
innovative program “Bulgarian National Heritage”, envisaging the publication
of 100 Bulgarian classic authors and free dissemination of these editions to
the libraries, as well as digitalization of the publications into multimedia
editions and wide access to everything written in them and about them through a
specially designed for the purpose webpage.
Jointly with the National library “St.St. Cyril and Melodious” he initiated the establishment of the first Bulgarian "Books In Print" Catalogue, which is published both on paper and CD-ROM. Jointly with the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Plovdiv he established in 1999 the National Award “Hristo G. Danov” for contributions to the national literary culture.
Svetlozar Zhekov is author of scores of monographs, articles and literary portraits, translator of hundredths of verses from the Russian classic and contemporary poetry. He is the founder of PERO Publishing – one of the first private publishing houses in Bulgaria after the 1989 democratic changes. He is one of the pioneers in the digitalization of the national literary heritage: jointly with Alexander Vanchev, Zhivko Ivanov and Svetoslav Petkov he developed the concept of and published the unique multimedia edition “Hristo Smirnenski – the New Perception”, in two volumes and CD-ROM. In 2002 this edition was awarded the National Prize “Hristo G. Danov” for contribution to the Bulgarian literary culture. Svetlozar Zhekov is the author of one of the currently most debated within the cultural community books – his literary inquiry with Kiril Kadiiski, which has not only shed a cross-light on almost four decades of our cultural and political life, but has also brought forth new challenges to the literary genre itself.
For the last couple of years Svetlozar Zhekov has been involved in a wide international project, "Hyper Learning", where his ambitious goal is to present at the European cultural stage the digitalized literary heritage of the great Bulgarian classic author Aleko Konstantinov.
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