Welcome to Practice Space!

Hello. Hi. How’s it hangin’?

Hello. Hi. How’s it hangin’? Welcome to

I’m Andrei Atanasov, an essayist, fiction writer, and criminal lawyer from Constanța, Romania.

Welcome to my corner of the World Wide Web.

I’m not a household name (yet), so you probably don’t know who I am.

Here are five rapid-fire facts about me:

• Andrei Atanasov is not my real name, though it’s surprisingly similar to it. I chose to publish under a pseudonym in order to separate my legal career from my art.

• I’m a proud late ‘90s child, with all that this entails, including but not limited to: a profound appreciation for animated movies; vague memories of a world without smartphones; a collection of CDs that includes Green Day, Bon Jovi, Eminem, and Iron Maiden; and an obsession with T-shirts, Mortal Kombat, and RPGs.

• I’ve been penning stories and essays for a little over five years. During this time, a few of my pieces have been published in literary magazines, including, most recently, Short Reads and Eunoia Review. You can find most of them here.

• I came to literature pretty late. Until my final year of high school, I hated reading, and spent my time button-mashing PS2 controllers and binge-consuming superhero media. Then, I met a wonderful Romanian language and literature teacher who showed me the magic of literature. It turned out, the way I’d been taught to evaluate books (using dry, technical, opaque language not my own) was dead wrong, and totally missed the point. Thanks to her, I became a voracious reader, and, eventually, a writer. You can read the whole story (and get a feel for my writing style) here.

• Like most people, I’m interested in lots of things. I read widely (anything from westerns to splatterpunk to YA romance to classic Russian literature is fair game), I watch a ton of stuff (big fan of anime, superheroes—yeah, that still—and A24 movies), I listen to a bunch of podcasts (among my favourites: Heavyweight, Everything is Alive, and Talk Easy), and I game, mostly on my Nintendo Switch (indie pixel art game squad, where u at?).

At the moment, this newsletter is on a bit of a wonky schedule, as I try to find pockets of time for it between my job and working on my first book (!!!).

(I’d rather not spoil anything, but I know you’re going to ask, so here goes: the book is an intense, emotionally-driven novella about an old widower who wants to kill himself and a stray cat who might just save him.)

Normally, though, I post twice a month. That’s about it, as far as rules go. And even that’s not set in stone.

What I like to do is let my gut dictate what I’m going to publish.

Over two years of publishing this newsletter, I sent out:

—essay-length memoirs (on childhood friendship, a braided essay featuring swimming pools, on how I made an unlikely friend in a dilapidated store, on my father’s rage, on broken bones, on death, on dreams, on dancing in supermarkets)

—a few short stories (Coda, Okamoto, The Box, The Worst Possible Moment, Snow-Fox vs. Leukemia, etc.)

—essays on various topics with nothing in common except my momentary interest in them (Dark Souls, Everything Everywhere All At Once, T-shirts, the vastness of space as a mindfulness exercise, animal abuse in the film industry, how to measure succcess, charging for one’s writing, cats as cruel killing machines)

—a bunch of weird, blog-like musings and life updates (adopting a stray cat, my new-found distaste for routines, dealing with writer’s block, being turned into a lover of coffee, a photo collection, writing for an audience of one, etc.)

—a series of haiku, inspired by household happenings

—a lot more, including a number of interviews and guest posts.

As you can see, it’s a mixed bag, to put it very mildly. It’s all in the name, really. This is my Practice Space—the dojo where I train for writing, and the place where I do my thinking.

A space in which I welcome you with open arms.

I hope to see you around here, watching me practice my craft (and maybe even doing some training of your own—the comment section is a lively, friendly forum for discussion!).

If all that sounds like something you’d like to do, why not subscribe below, and receive each new post straight to your inbox?

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