Miroslav Penkov was born in 1982 in Bulgaria and grew up in Sofia. He had his first poem published at the age of ten and his first short story when he was 16. In 2000, he had stories published in several leading Bulgarian magazines, which led to his first story collection, BLOOD MOONS, being published there. After leaving school, in 2001 Miroslav won a scholarship to study at the University of Arkansas where he graduated in Psychology, then gained an MFA in Creative Writing. His first story written in English to be published was 'Icarus Reborn', published in 2005 in The Ozark Review . Since then, his awards include the 2007 Eudora Welty Prize in Fiction for 'Buying Lenin', which was also chosen by Salman Rushdie and Heidi Pitlor for the 2008 Best American Short Stories .
His first collection of stories in English, EAST OF THE WEST, was published in 2011 in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and by Sceptre in the UK., and was translated into several languages. In 2012, the title story won the BBC International Short Story Award.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas and a fiction editor of the American Literary Review.