thumbnail image
broken image

EMMANUELLA HRISTOVA

    Buy The Other Crown
    • about
    • news
    • poetry books
    • iBooks button
    • poetry excerpts
    • art
    • interviews
    • publicity
    • newsletter
    • connect
    • …  
      • about
      • news
      • poetry books
      • iBooks button
      • poetry excerpts
      • art
      • interviews
      • publicity
      • newsletter
      • connect
    broken image

    EMMANUELLA HRISTOVA

      Buy The Other Crown
      • about
      • news
      • poetry books
      • iBooks button
      • poetry excerpts
      • art
      • interviews
      • publicity
      • newsletter
      • connect
      • …  
        • about
        • news
        • poetry books
        • iBooks button
        • poetry excerpts
        • art
        • interviews
        • publicity
        • newsletter
        • connect
      broken image
      • broken image

        artist

        Emmanuella Hristova was born in Oakland, California and grew up in the Bay Area. She is the third daughter to Bulgarian parents who immigrated to California shortly before she was born. She began drawing at the ripe age of four, and continued to study the fine arts through high school. In 2009, she received a Congressional award for her colored pencil portrait titled Boy in Red. Trained as a realist with a penchant for strong lines and bold colors, Emmanuella easily transitioned into acrylic painting during her studies at UC Berkeley. Her representational abstract portraits explore the objectification of the subject, whether it's herself or famous figures. She is currently focusing on solely abstract acrylic paintings that represent the drama of human emotions as storms and other acts of God.

         

        Photo © Angelica Brewis

        broken image

        poet

        First an artist; second, a poet. Emmanuella continued to explore her creativity through poetry, which she began writing at twenty-four. She spent two years as an English teacher in Richmond, California. During that time, she self-published her first poetry collection: The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder. Her poems have been published in For Women Who Roar Issue 2: Power, 365 Days of Covid, and She Rose Issue 3: The Goddess. The Other Crown is her second self-published poetry book. Currently, she is working on two more poetry manuscripts and seeking literary representation for her first novel.

      • news

        Book cover of "The Other Crown", Emmanuella Hristova's second poetry book, showing a skull wearing a crown

        My second poetry book The Other Crown is now available in print and eBook formats!

        The Other Crown is an illustrated collection of poems that asks the question: how much power do women have to give up in order to fall in love? Hristova’s second poetry book explores themes of love, romance and sexuality as they are intertwined with the patriarchy. Questioning how she gains her power as a woman, Hristova attempts to unwind the complicated nature of relationships, societal expectations, and the imbalance of power between the sexes. The Other Crown is a love letter to women: their love lives, their heartbreaks, and their friendships with one another. Click here to read excerpts

        Buy the eBook on Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords, vivlio, Thalia, or

        Buy on Amazon
        Button that says "+Add to Goodreads"

        The reviews are already coming in. The Other Crown is already rated 4.2 ⭐️ on Goodreads!

      • Book cover for The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder by Emmanuella Hristova

        The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder by Emmanuella Hristova

        Emmanuella's debut poetry collection documents the birth and death of a relationship, and the death of her sister. Each poem is an emotional time-stamp that plunges the reader into the depths of the author’s feelings as they burgeon and wane. The book reads like a diary and chronicles the boundaries of the things that we all feel: love, heartache, and pain that gives way to hope.

         

        Get a full-color printed copy here, or an eBook version on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Play, Kobo or Lulu  

         

        4.5 stars on Amazon

        4 stars on Goodreads

         

        Read the reviews! 

        Click here to read excerpts, or

        Buy the eBook
        Buy the full-color illustrated version
      • Button for a link to see Goodreads review of The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder by Emmanuella Hristova

        The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder is rated 4 ⭐️ on Goodreads!

        Read reviews!

        Button to buy The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder on the iBooks store

        Read The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder

        on iBooks

      • poetry excerpts

        Read even more on Instagram: @emmy_speaks

        Book cover of "The Other Crown", Emmanuella Hristova's second poetry book, showing a skull wearing a crown

         

        upon crowning her

        I am not

        a trophy;

        I am the crown that

        you wear on your head,

        anointing you.

        I am not

        an acquisition;

        I am the coronation

        you adorn,

        granting you royalty.

        I am not

        the medal that

        you enclose around

        your neck;

        I am the scepter

        you grasp,

        bestowing you favor.

        I am not

        a prize,

        I am the power you

        wish to

        hold in the palm of

        your hand.

        Black and white pencil sketch of a skull wearing a crown

        the other crown

        My previous-self wanted to be

        a princess fit with golden gloves and a

        crown placed on my head to rule with

        glass slippers wrapped around my feet,

        hiding inside a fortress I

        built for myself, waiting for

        someone to find me.

        This previous woman, this weaker woman

        could not balance the

        heavy weight of the crown and

        stand on her toes

        smushed inside crystal shoes so she

        bled and bled and bled and out

        of her stupor, she

        dislodged the weapons meant to bind her

        and pulled out a sword.

        This new woman, this stronger woman now

        wanted nothing more than to

        slay the dragons before her, and

        watch the fury of the world, the fury of her heart,

        spill out in front of her for

        everyone to watch burn.

        Book cover of The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder by Emmanuella Hristova

         

        October 9th

        I hesitate when you kiss me because I

        am afraid you will taste the disaster

        brewing underneath my skin. Or maybe,

        my kisses taste hot, like a dangerous

        sun storm raging on the broiling

        surface of our most familiar star. Or maybe,

        they taste cool, like a bubble rising

        to the surface above a deep ocean cavern that

        holds fountains of dark chaos

        beneath its depths. Or maybe,

        they taste fluid, like running the edges of

        worn book pages across your lips, inhaling

        the texture of clandestine paper and ink that

        spill out unknown stories. Or maybe,

        you kiss me because you are sucking

        the poison that penetrates out from

        the cocoon of my heart,

        pulsing through abysmal channels

        till it reaches the contours of my fingertips.

        You probably feel it like a heat on your skin,

        like an electric stove

        growing too searing to tolerate. Or maybe,

        you kiss me because you like

        the taste of disorder; to you

        it tastes sweet. To me

        it feels like catastrophe.

        Red ink sketch of a hand squeezing a heart into a jar by Emmanuella Hristova

         upon identifying the day

        I knew I loved you

        the moment I saw you

        the second time I came to

        visit you in The City and you

        were wearing a cerulean button-down

        that matched your eyes and you

        had just shaved your beard and

        I wanted to kiss you, but

        not like a nervous first kiss or

        a slobbery wet one; but rather,

        the kind of peck lovers give to one another

        after being together for years and

        what they’re passing between their lips

        is time.

      • art

        forest
        broken image
        Forgiveness
        Absolution
        Attachment
        Skull in Rhapsody
        Christ in Thorns
        Avocado
        Pink Illusion
        Citrus
        left eye
        nose
        right eye
        lips
        < /break >
        Lady Lazarus
        Le Corps
        Repression
        The Other Crown
        A Study in Mangos
        Autobiography
        Fi
        Boy in Red
        Untitled
        Drowning
        Children of Togo
        Skeleton Study
        Boys in Jest
        Tell the World
        Girl in Charcoal
        Untitled (twin girls)
        Boys in Bloom
        The Fury of Metallic
        Les Mouvement des Figures
        Midnight Snack
        Popsicle Toes
        Rebirth
        Accra, Ghana
      • interviews & features

        author interviews & book features

        Sunday Mornings at the River

        "Common themes that come up in my work are grief, faith, family, heartbreak, feminism and women’s issues, immigration and other social justice themes. They say that you write about what you know—and of course, I started writing to deal with my own grief and heartbreak after losing my sister to cancer when I was 24 years old. Writing also gave me a reprieve from the emotional issues that came along with my adult relationships. However, my writing reveals much of my personal background as well."

        Dawn's Reading Nook

        "I started writing poetry when I was in graduate school, when I fell in love for the very first time. It was my first adult relationship and navigating all my feelings while student-teaching grew too overwhelming for my heart. So, my emotions spilled onto the page in order to empty my mind of the weight. At the same time, after the relationship ended, I found out my sister was dying. This was the most painful experience of my life—and I documented each changing feeling, each nuance, in my notebook and then tucked it away for some time. Nine months later, I had a book about love, loss, pain, grief, and overcoming."

        Books and Banter

        "My latest book is a poetry collection titled The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder. I started it while I was a soon-to-be college graduate musing about feminist issues like street harassment. Eventually, I began writing about the romantic relationship I was involved with at the time, and about the man I was falling in love with. When that relationship ended, the poetry took a tumultuous turn into heartbreak that melted into a depression once I found out my sister was dying, two weeks after my break-up."

        A Blue Million Books

        "When I first began this book, it was my diary. It helped me heal through the most difficult part of my life. I took the time and effort to craft and edit what I had written during that time period, in order to give it to others so they too can heal. I published the most intimate parts of myself in order to help others going through a heartbreak or losing someone to cancer. I especially wrote it for women, as a lot of the poetry is written through a lamenting, feminist lens."

        Renee's Author Spotlight

        book feature

        VK Tritschler

        "The most powerful thing about it all is that writing gives us the ability to choose how we want to remember events, trauma, and suffering and how we want the world to remember us. We’re only a victim if we write that we are. We can be the hero, the overcomer, the warrior if we write that we are. Writing is the ultimate empowerment tool."

      • publicity

        publications, articles & guest blog posts

        She Rose Issue 3: The Goddess

        My poem titled "Resurrection" has been published in She Rose  Issue 3: The Goddess.

         

        Read now!

        365 Days of Poetry

        "confinement" has been published in 365 Days of Covid, a poetry anthology by Sunday Mornings at the River.

         

         

        Get your copy on Amazon:

        US, UK, FR, DE, ES, IT, JP, CA, AU

        For Women Who Roar Issue 2: Power

        "The War Within Your Tongue" and "Socialism's Capitalist Daughter" published in

        For Women Who Roar Issue 2: Power

         

        Two new poems by Emmanuella Hristova featured in this online & print magazine for women by women.

         

        Read now!

        East County Today

        "During her time in graduate school, Hristova melded her raw emotion and inner turmoil into a book-length collection of poems, but decided to let them sit for a while until she had fully processed her feelings. When she revisited her work nearly a year later, one of her close friends urged Hristova to publish her poems. After finding an editor and assembling the manuscript for an e-book, Hristova’s work became reality."

        Duffy the Writer - guest blog post

        "When I think back on the worst period of my life, it often comes back to me a bit faded in memory. As if I had blacked out repeatedly after drinking too much, or as if my doctor had prescribed me heavy sedatives that affected my brain. The pressure of what I faced was like a printing press—pressing me down underneath a weight until I was crushed, with the stain of my body leaving some beautiful markings on paper."

        That Feminist Life - guest blog post

        "The poems in The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder are about love, heartbreak, depression, and grief. The collection begins with the relationship—falling in love, hesitation, turmoil. Eventually, I chronicle the end of the relationship and dwell on the breakup. Two weeks later I find out my sister is dying from stage 4 cancer. And depression unfolds as a result.

        Although I began writing about sexism, I chose to leave those poems for the final chapter. There, I tackle sexual harassment, sexual assault, and oppression. The poems move through all the emotions I’ve felt as a result—torment, sadness, anger and reveling glee. The final chapter is dedicated to grieving and healing women."

        Review Tales by Jeyran Main - guest blog post

         ""It’s no secret that throughout my so-far short life, I have not been a stranger to pain. That is, after experiencing five familial deaths before the time I was twenty-five, among other brokenhearted experiences, the pain became far-too-familiar to me. But I also learned that during these moments, when I felt the weight of life crushing me, was when dark, reflective creativity flowed out of me the most. I learned that in order to create—one must go through pain."

        Gotta Write Network - guest blog post

        ""I never intended to be a poet. And I never set out to write a poetry book either. What happened instead, was a series of tragic events that forced me to turn inward—into a diary. What began as feminist musings into a green Moleskin notebook after I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, turned into page after page about an unfolding romance. For, I was falling in love for the first time." 

      • sign up for email updates!

        Sign up for my monthly email newsletter and get some free poetry bookmarks!

      • connect

        Email & social media links

        For inquiries, please email

        Envelope button with a link to email Emmanuella Hristova
        Black Instagram button with a link to Emmanuella Hristova's account @emmy_speaks
        Black TikTok button with a link to Emmanuella Hristova's TikTok page
        Black Facebook button with a link to Emmanuella Hristova's page
        Black Amazon button with a link to Emmanuella Hristova's Author page
        Beige Goodreads button with a link to Emmanuella Hristova's page

      Copyright © 2023 - Proudly built with Strikingly

        Home
        Posts
        Instagram
        TikTok
      Cookie Use
      We use cookies to ensure a smooth browsing experience. By continuing we assume you accept the use of cookies.
      Learn More