American Author Project: Elizabeth Kostova
Although there were many people who tried to re-create Bram Stoker’s Dracula, only Elizabeth Kostova was able to really capture the true essence – albeit 113 years after the original was written in the first place. Even though nobody can compare to the Bram Stoker original, Elizabeth Kostova did entirely get the ideas written down in such a way that it was easy to tell she paid attention to the tiniest of details. Elizabeth Kostova is important to American Literature because she keeps classic tales in her modern-day stories, only twisting minor details and leaving the root story in place, almost as if to teach somebody today the original story and make it more relatable and understandable. Elizabeth Kostova has had an interesting life. “Kostova was born in Connecticut but lived in various college towns and spent time in Europe during her formative years, thanks to her father’s academic career.” (Notable Biographies, Sidelights) She traveled with her sisters and parents from state-to-state depending on where her dad was needed. Her education was also difficult to pinpoint, as she went to multiple colleges. “She graduated from Yale University in 1988, and began post-graduate work in Slavonic music, which took her to Bulgari just days after its long-time communist dictatorship fell in 1989...By then, Kostova had settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband, and earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan.” (Notable Biographies, Sidelights) Kostova had moved quite a lot, but she met her husband on one of her moves. “There she met her future husband, Gyorgi Kostov, who became one of the first hundred citizens to be granted a passport to travel abroad in Bulgaria’s first days of democratic freedom. They wed in 1990, and settled in the Philadelphia area…During this period of her life, Kostova and her husband took a hike through the Appalachians, which made her recall the stories her father used to tell her during their own trips when she was a youngster.” (Notable Biographies, Sidelights) She has also created the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. This “Provides support for Bulgarian Creative Writing and nourishing the friendship between Bulgarian, American, and British authors.” (Web Biography, Paragraph 5) Elizabeth Kostova wasn’t always a writer. She has also “worked as a writing teacher, landscaper, writing teacher at University of Michigan.” (Notable Biographies, Career) She’s been an author since 1995. Her writing began because of her father – he was actually the influence for many (if not all) of her works. “The mystery of The Historian reaches back to the graduate-school advisor of the narrator’s father – a man who, her father relates, one day vanished entirely, leaving only …show more content…
Although there were many others before her, she was the only one who was really able to do this without messing everything up and creating a completely new story instead of leaving every other detail in the story the same. She’s not only a good writer, but she’s also a good story-teller in the way that she keeps the original story as the base. Although everyone else could have potentially done the same as her, nobody really did. That’s what makes her both unique and one of the American authors that we should learn about in
Although there were many people who tried to re-create Bram Stoker’s Dracula, only Elizabeth Kostova was able to really capture the true essence – albeit 113 years after the original was written in the first place. Even though nobody can compare to the Bram Stoker original, Elizabeth Kostova did entirely get the ideas written down in such a way that it was easy to tell she paid attention to the tiniest of details. Elizabeth Kostova is important to American Literature because she keeps classic tales in her modern-day stories, only twisting minor details and leaving the root story in place, almost as if to teach somebody today the original story and make it more relatable and understandable. Elizabeth Kostova has had an interesting life. “Kostova was born in Connecticut but lived in various college towns and spent time in Europe during her formative years, thanks to her father’s academic career.” (Notable Biographies, Sidelights) She traveled with her sisters and parents from state-to-state depending on where her dad was needed. Her education was also difficult to pinpoint, as she went to multiple colleges. “She graduated from Yale University in 1988, and began post-graduate work in Slavonic music, which took her to Bulgari just days after its long-time communist dictatorship fell in 1989...By then, Kostova had settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband, and earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan.” (Notable Biographies, Sidelights) Kostova had moved quite a lot, but she met her husband on one of her moves. “There she met her future husband, Gyorgi Kostov, who became one of the first hundred citizens to be granted a passport to travel abroad in Bulgaria’s first days of democratic freedom. They wed in 1990, and settled in the Philadelphia area…During this period of her life, Kostova and her husband took a hike through the Appalachians, which made her recall the stories her father used to tell her during their own trips when she was a youngster.” (Notable Biographies, Sidelights) She has also created the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. This “Provides support for Bulgarian Creative Writing and nourishing the friendship between Bulgarian, American, and British authors.” (Web Biography, Paragraph 5) Elizabeth Kostova wasn’t always a writer. She has also “worked as a writing teacher, landscaper, writing teacher at University of Michigan.” (Notable Biographies, Career) She’s been an author since 1995. Her writing began because of her father – he was actually the influence for many (if not all) of her works. “The mystery of The Historian reaches back to the graduate-school advisor of the narrator’s father – a man who, her father relates, one day vanished entirely, leaving only …show more content…
Although there were many others before her, she was the only one who was really able to do this without messing everything up and creating a completely new story instead of leaving every other detail in the story the same. She’s not only a good writer, but she’s also a good story-teller in the way that she keeps the original story as the base. Although everyone else could have potentially done the same as her, nobody really did. That’s what makes her both unique and one of the American authors that we should learn about in