Accents Publishing was born on January 5, 2010, with the initial idea of making beautiful yet affordable handmade poetry chapbooks.
My co-founder and I figured out how to print, assemble, and bind them ourselves. They really were compact works of art, and people loved them. The problem was that they loved them faster than we could make them. Before long, it seemed we were always printing, folding, binding, and assembling books. Eventually, we realized that if Accents was going to grow, we had to change the model. We moved from producing books by hand to professional printing.
However, our focus on poetry continued.
Poetry has been the specialty of Accents Publishing from the beginning, and most of the books we have published are poetry collections, although our list has expanded over the years to include novels, short story collections, essays, and memoirs. We describe ourselves as “an independent press for brilliant voices” and this is true regardless of the genre.
Translation has become an especially important part of that mission, and it helps that I am a Bulgarian-born publishing poet who is active in two languages and in the literary communities of both Bulgaria and the USA.
Our first major book in translation was The Season of Delicate Hunger: Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry, which introduced more than thirty contemporary Bulgarian poets to English-language readers. I translated 29 of the 32 poets included. It was a gargantuan undertaking, and I am glad I did not understand in advance exactly how much work it would require, because I might never have attempted it. I am also grateful that I did. The anthology has had a long life and continues to be read and referenced years after its publication.
Another Bulgarian book in translation particularly dear to me is Selected Short Stories by Ludmil Todorov, brilliantly and lovingly translated by his wife, Zlatna Kostova, and son, Matey Todorov. The stories are quirky and memorable and a very enjoyable read.
I personally love the art of literary translation, and I have developed an informal ambition: to translate and publish at least one Bulgarian writer every year. Recent books resulting from that commitment include The Invisible Arm of Peace by Palestinian poet Khairi Hamdan, whose poems were written in Bulgarian and which I selected, arranged, and translated into English; The Chaos of Desire by the late Bulgarian poet Marin Bodakov, which I also selected, arranged, and translated; and Happiness Street by award-winning Bulgarian poet and radio journalist Olya Stoyanova.
At Accents, we also offer writing classes, produce the Accents podcast, host free weekly online generative writing meetings, and participate actively in the literary communities where our authors live, especially in Kentucky, where the press is based. But books remain at the center of everything we do.
Over the next few months, we are excited to release several books that demonstrate the range of our vision: The Double-Souled Son, a novel by Mary Louise Hill; True Bias, essays and sketches by Melita Schaum; Orfeito, poetry by Ricardo Nazario y Colón; Flotilla: A Family Memoir in Verse, poetry by Melissa Jørgenrud Helton; Your Curious Guidebook to Climate Change, poetry by Vivian Faith Prescott; and a bilingual book by Bulgarian poet Daniela Nyberg.
I love publishing writers at every stage of their careers, but I have a particular affection for first books and first-time authors. What catches my attention is work that is fresh and surprising, work that demonstrates real craft but also possesses that almost supernatural quality of “only I could have written this.”
If I open your manuscript and feel that I am reading something I’ve never read before, and despite everything else waiting for me that day, I cannot stop reading, there is a good chance I will want Accents to publish it.
From that point on, it’s a rewarding journey of collaboration, and we do everything possible to support both the author and the book at every stage of publication and well beyond.
A Bulgarian by birth, Katerina Stoykova is a bilingual poet living in Kentucky and the author of Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House (University Press of Kentucky, 2024) and The Poet’s Guide to Publishing: How to Conceive, Arrange, Edit, Publish and Market a Book of Poetry (McFarland, 2024). Katerina is the founder and senior editor of Accents Publishing, as well as the creator of the Accents podcast on WUKY. Katerina served as the 2023-2024 Director of the Kentucky Book Festival, as well as the Director for the Center for the Book in Kentucky and is the 2025-2026 President of the Kentucky State Poetry Society.
I love this piece and Stoykova’s description of her project’s birth and maturation. One book of poetry a year! Wow, that’s an admirably ambitious goal! She sounds like a marvelous, collaborative editor, but then I just adore people with a mission.