Bulgarian writer Zdravka Evtimova received the inaugural 2023 Dr. T. O'Connor Sloane Prize in speculative fiction literature for her novel “He May Wear My Silence”. The award recognizes Evtimova as “one of Bulgaria’s foremost contemporary authors, whose established body of internationally award-winning work has deeply enriched the field of speculative fiction and more broadly, literature as a whole.”

The novel “He May Wear My Silence” was published in the US in December. Starship Sloane Publishing invited Evtimova to present her novel after her short story "To Dimitar - a Poet" collected the biggest number of votes from writers, readers and critics on the American platform "Critters" in the section for stories with science fiction elements. The novel is a surreal collision between otherworldly magical realism and folklore, the editor of "Star Line" magazine Jean-Paul Garnier wrote.