The Story
Winner of the 2024 Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature
With the puckish humor of Fran Lebowitz and the keen inventiveness of Lydia Davis, Sofi Stambo's debut collection leans into curiosity, family, and the old-world bonds that draw her motley characters together.
A nervous dog takes flight over Manhattan. A woman soothes her neighbors with multilingual telepathy. A purse snatcher inherits her victim's scribbled lists--and her worries. In these stories, immigrants to New York City work their way through absurd situations into even messier ones, communing with their fellow diners, officemates, and the local cemetery geese, and greeting chaos with a grin.
From Bulgaria to America, People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much pulls at the threads of daily life, unwinding the ordinary into scenes of hilarity, introspection, and surprising connection.
Author: Sofi Stambo
Publisher: Restless Books
Published: 06/09/2026
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.00h x 5.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781632064172
Review Citation(s):
Shelf Awareness 01/01/0001
Publishers Weekly 05/04/2026
About the Author
Stambo, Sofi: -
Sofi Stambo is a fiction writer based in New York. An excerpt from her forthcoming novel, This Train Has Sailed, won the 2024 LitMag Virginia Woolf Award. Her short stories have won the 2015 DISQUIET Literary Prize for fiction, and been nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in Promethean, Ep;phany, The Kenyon Review, The MacGuffin, New Letters, Fourteen Hills, New England Review, Stand, American Short Fiction, Guernica, Agni, Chicago Quarterly Review, Granta Bulgaria, Tin House, Another Chicago Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, The Common, River Styx, and The Rumpus. Links to some of her publications can be found on her website www.sofistambo.com. Stambo has a master's degree in literature from Sofia University St. K. Ohridski, Bulgaria, and was a graduate student in Literature at City College, New York.
Mihaylova, Yana: - Yana Mihaylova is a Bulgarian-born and NYC-raised artist and designer. She received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2014, and has studied part-time at Grand Central Atelier, New York Academy of Art, Institute of Classical Art & Architecture, and the Art Students League. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.Description
Winner of the 2024 Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature
With the puckish humor of Fran Lebowitz and the keen inventiveness of Lydia Davis, Sofi Stambo's debut collection leans into curiosity, family, and the old-world bonds that draw her motley characters together.
A nervous dog takes flight over Manhattan. A woman soothes her neighbors with multilingual telepathy. A purse snatcher inherits her victim's scribbled lists--and her worries. In these stories, immigrants to New York City work their way through absurd situations into even messier ones, communing with their fellow diners, officemates, and the local cemetery geese, and greeting chaos with a grin.
From Bulgaria to America, People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much pulls at the threads of daily life, unwinding the ordinary into scenes of hilarity, introspection, and surprising connection.
Author: Sofi Stambo
Publisher: Restless Books
Published: 06/09/2026
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.00h x 5.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781632064172
Review Citation(s):
Shelf Awareness 01/01/0001
Publishers Weekly 05/04/2026
About the Author
Stambo, Sofi: -
Sofi Stambo is a fiction writer based in New York. An excerpt from her forthcoming novel, This Train Has Sailed, won the 2024 LitMag Virginia Woolf Award. Her short stories have won the 2015 DISQUIET Literary Prize for fiction, and been nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in Promethean, Ep;phany, The Kenyon Review, The MacGuffin, New Letters, Fourteen Hills, New England Review, Stand, American Short Fiction, Guernica, Agni, Chicago Quarterly Review, Granta Bulgaria, Tin House, Another Chicago Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, The Common, River Styx, and The Rumpus. Links to some of her publications can be found on her website www.sofistambo.com. Stambo has a master's degree in literature from Sofia University St. K. Ohridski, Bulgaria, and was a graduate student in Literature at City College, New York.
Mihaylova, Yana: - Yana Mihaylova is a Bulgarian-born and NYC-raised artist and designer. She received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2014, and has studied part-time at Grand Central Atelier, New York Academy of Art, Institute of Classical Art & Architecture, and the Art Students League. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
