Igor Hochel Slovakia

IGOR HOCHEL (read Hokhel) was born in 1953 in Bratislava and studied Slovak and Bulgarian languages and literature at the Philosophical Faculty of Comenius University (FFUK) in Bratislava. After graduating, he was employed at the Pedagogical Faculty in Nitra. From 1982 to 1985 he was a lector of Slovak at the St. Kliment of Ochrid University in Sofia, Bulgaria, after which he returned to the Pedagogical Faculty in Nitra. From 1987 to 2001 he was part of the editorial staff of the literary journal Romboid, being its editor-in-chief from 1996-1999. Since 1996 he has been employed as a lecturer (currently as docent) in the Department of Slovak Literature at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Constantin Philosopher in Nitra, lecturing on Slovak literature of the second half of the twentieth century, contemporary literature, literary criticism, semiotics of literature and creative writing. From 1991-2004 he was a visiting lecturer on the History of Bulgarian literature at the FFUK.

He has published five published collections of poetry: Strom pred domom (The Tree in Front of the House) 1979, Uprostred je mlcanie (Amidst Is the Silence) 1993, Kôra nežne praská (The Bark Is Cracking Tenderly) 1997, Utkané z vlasov (Woven from the Hair) 2005, and Pátraci v krajine nezvestných (Scouts in the Land of the Missing) 1995, a poem complemented by graphic lists.

For over thirty years, he has devoted himself to literary criticism; selections from his essays and reviews were published in 2003 under the title Dotyky, sondy, postoje (Touches, Probes, Attitudes) and in 2005 his monograph, Ladislav Ballek: Príbeh ako princíp (Ladislav Ballek: Story as a Principle) was published. He is the co-author (with L. Cúzy and Z. Kákošová) of Slovenská literatúra po roku 1989 (Slovak Literature after 1989), 2007.

He is also known as a translator from Bulgarian, and has translated the poems of Jordan Radickov, Ivan Davidkov, Maxim Asenov and other Bulgarian poets.

(2010)