Author of English Adaptation of Bulgarian Folk Tales

Scott Cairns

Author / Poet

Dr. Scott Cairns has masterfully adapted two volumes of Bulgarian Folk Tales for a new English audience through his collaboration with Varna International Publications. Cairns brings the elegance of poetic language to these tales in his original English adaptation.  

 

Cairns was born in Tacoma, Washington. He is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Theology of Doubt (1985), The Translation of 

Babel (1990), Philokalia (2002), Idiot Psalms (2014), and Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015).  Besides writing poetry, he has crafted the libretto for the oratorios, “The Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp” and “A Melancholy Beauty.” Spirituality plays an integral role in Cairns’ writing. He says of his writing process, “I’ve come to think of beauty as how God woos us to Himself. One doesn’t so much create it or illuminate it as partake of it. Thereafter, one participates, collaborates, in its endless development.”
 
Cairns has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and was awarded the Denise Levertov Award in 2014.  Cairns is the founding director of Writing Workshops in Greece, a program that brings writers to study and engage with literary life in modern Greece.